module-26-spring-ai-chatbot

Module 26: Spring AI Chatbot Agent (portability flavor)

The module-25 chatbot, rebuilt as a Spring Boot @AcpAgent that talks to the model through Spring AI's ChatClient.

It exists to answer one question: "Am I locked to one model provider?" No. The ACP agent never changes — the model is whatever Spring AI autoconfigures from the spring-ai-starter-model-* dependency on the classpath.

Three flavors, one agent

Module	How it calls the model
25	Raw Anthropic Java SDK (clearest call site)
26 (this)	Spring AI ChatClient — multi-provider
27	LangChain4j ChatModel

The ACP handlers (@NewSession / @Prompt) are identical to the module-23 echo bean. The only difference from echo is the body of @Prompt:

String answer = chatClient.prompt().user(request.text()).call().content();
context.sendMessage(answer);

Switch providers without touching code

Spring AI's ChatClient sits over a ChatModel that's autoconfigured from the starter on the classpath. To use OpenAI, Gemini, or a local Ollama model instead of Anthropic, swap the dependency and the spring.ai.<provider>.* properties — ChatbotAgentBean does not change:

<!-- this module -->
<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.ai</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-ai-starter-model-anthropic</artifactId>
</dependency>
<!-- swap for: spring-ai-starter-model-openai / -ollama / ... -->

Built on the ACP Spring Boot starter

This module depends on the ACP Spring Boot starter (the same autoconfiguration as module 23). From SDK 0.80.0 the starter is part of the SDK, com.agentclientprotocol:acp-spring-boot-starter at the SDK's version; through SDK 0.18.0 it was org.springaicommunity:acp-spring-boot-starter 0.12.0. Autoconfiguration discovers the @AcpAgent bean and manages the agent lifecycle.

Prerequisites

• Java 21 (Spring Boot 4)
• ANTHROPIC_API_KEY exported (read via spring.ai.anthropic.api-key)

Build & run

./mvnw package -pl module-26-spring-ai-chatbot -q
./mvnw exec:java -pl module-26-spring-ai-chatbot

Streaming

ChatClient also streams — .stream().content() returns a Flux<String>:

chatClient.prompt().user(request.text()).stream().content()
    .toStream().forEach(context::sendMessage);