Amplifier, In Your Browser

A conversational front end for Amplifier sessions

What it is

Amplifier Chat turns amplifier-distro's session APIs into a conversation you can actually have

It's a browser-based chat UI plugin for amplifier-distro — a conversational interface for creating and managing Amplifier sessions, mounting its endpoints under /chat/.

The power was always there in the APIs. The question was whether it was real.

# amplifier-distro plugin, entry point:
[amplifierd.plugins]
chat = "chat_plugin"

# single-page UI served at:
GET /chat/  →  static/index.html

Proof

It's real and shipping — a public MIT repo with a full merge history behind it

microsoft/amplifier-chat is public and MIT-licensed, created 2026-03-06. This is a concrete, merged product — not a sketch.

But a repo full of endpoints still isn't somewhere a person can sit and work.

102

commits on HEAD

70

merged PRs (#4–#91)

MIT

public license

The gap

A REST endpoint and a streaming API aren't a place a person can sit and work

amplifier-distro exposes a native REST API for session lifecycle and Server-Sent Events for streaming. Powerful plumbing — but not, on its own, a human-usable surface.

So the design question becomes: how do you build the chat surface without inventing new plumbing?

How it works

The UI rides the native REST API plus SSE — deliberately no WebSocket required

Session lifecycle runs over amplifier-distro's native REST API; streaming rides Server-Sent Events. One design choice turns the raw APIs into a live chat surface.

With transport settled, what actually sits on top of it?

# README:19
"The UI uses amplifier-distro's
 native REST API for session
 lifecycle and SSE for streaming
 — no WebSocket required."

The surface

On top of that transport sits a real conversational surface

15 slash commands, voice input/output, and pinned session history — a complete front end, not a demo. Voice ships as an optional extra; session pins live under ~/.amplifier-chat/.

The striking part isn't just what it does — it's how quickly it came together.

15slash commandshelp · status · tools · agents · config · cwd · clear · modes · mode · rename · fork · voice · skills · skill · bundle (coming soon)
▶Voice input/outputoptional extra: pywhispercpp / av / edge-tts
★Session history & pinsstored under ~/.amplifier-chat/

The turn

Nearly all of it landed in one March 2026 sprint — authored overwhelmingly by one person

90 of 102 commits landed in March 2026, with a 7-commit April and a 5-commit July dependency tail. Samuel Lee authored 78 of those commits, merging nearly every feature PR.

That reframes the whole thing: a full chat surface as the output of a single concentrated push.

90/102

commits in March 2026

78

commits by Samuel Lee

5,484

lines of Python in src/

The payoff

A one-sprint, SSE-only chat front end for Amplifier — with real test discipline keeping it honest

The complete conversational surface — 15 commands, voice, session history — rides native REST + SSE with no WebSocket, and is backed by 462 test functions across 43 test files.

Fast to build, but not untested. So where does it actually stand?

462

test functions

43

test files

0

WebSockets required

Where it stands

Still pre-1.0 — a fork-and-experiment head start on a browser home for Amplifier

Version 0.1.0 with no git release tags, and the README notes it isn't yet accepting external contributions — "feel free to fork and experiment!" An honest early-stage invitation, not a GA launch.

A conversational surface for Amplifier is here today, in the browser — ready to fork and try.

v0.1.0from pyproject.toml0 git release tags
↗Contributions not yet open"feel free to fork and experiment!" (README:118)
◎Requires Python >= 3.12amplifier-chat, installs as an amplifierd plugin

Sources

Feature status: Shipped · pre-1.0 (v0.1.0)

Research Methodology

Repository: microsoft/amplifier-chat (public, MIT), HEAD ebef47c

Data as of: gh snapshot 2026-07-21; repo pushedAt 2026-07-13

Commands run:

git remote -v; git rev-parse HEAD — origin microsoft/amplifier-chat, HEAD ebef47c
git rev-list --count HEAD — 102 commits
gh pr list --repo microsoft/amplifier-chat --state merged --limit 200 --json number — 70 merged PRs (#4–#91)
grep -rh 'def test_' tests/ | wc -l; ls tests/test_*.py | wc -l — 462 test functions across 43 files
find src -name '*.py' | xargs wc -l | tail -1 — 5,484 LOC in src/
grep -c 'CommandDef(' src/chat_plugin/commands.py — 15 slash commands
grep -n -i 'sse\|websocket' README.md — native REST + SSE, no WebSocket (README:19)
git shortlog -sne HEAD — Samuel Lee 78 commits; Paul Payne 9; Amplifier Dev 7; dependabot 7; Salil Das 1
git log --format='%ad' --date=format:'%Y-%m' | sort | uniq -c — 90 (2026-03) / 7 (2026-04) / 5 (2026-07)
cat pyproject.toml — v0.1.0, Python >=3.12; git tag | wc -l — 0 tags

Gaps: Star/fork counts (2/2) are a live snapshot and will drift. "Amplifier Dev" is a scaffold identity, not necessarily a distinct human. "Launch" framing is editorial — no explicit GA announcement was found in-repo (v0.1.0, contributions not yet open).

Primary contributor: Samuel Lee — 78 of 102 commits (~76%).