What is Aelio?

Aelio is an open-source conversational runtime that turns your platform backend into an AI-powered chat experience.

Aelio is an open-source conversational runtime that lets any platform offer its customers a chat experience on your preferred chat interface — by installing the Aelio SDK in their existing backend.

Two agents in one system

Aelio is not just a chatbot wrapper. It runs two agents simultaneously:

Conversational agent

Talks to your end customer in real time. Calls your SDK functions as LLM tools. Handles safety rails, write confirmations, and multi-turn dialogue.

Analytical agent

Continuously monitors every conversation. Extracts durable facts about each customer (preferences, order context, recurring intents). Recalls that intelligence in future interactions via vector search.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                     Per-customer intelligence               │
│                                                             │
│  conversations ──► extract facts ──► memory (vector-indexed)│
│       ▲                                      │              │
│       └──────── recall on next turn ◄────────┘              │
│                                                             │
│  Stored in: SQLite + sqlite-vec (embedded, single file)   │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Three products, one system

┌────────────────────────┐        outbound WS /sdk        ┌──────────────────────────┐
│  Your backend          │ ─────────(Bearer secret)────▶ │  Aelio Server            │
│  @aelio/sdk            │ ◀──── invoke / send frames ─── │  agentic runtime         │
│  your auth · DB · logic│                                │  tool loop · safety      │
└────────────────────────┘                                │  memory · storage        │
                                                          └──────────────────────────┘
┌────────────────────────┐        browser WS /widget/ws            ▲
│  Your website          │ ──────────────────────────────────────┘
│  @aelio/chat (widget)  │ ◀──── ready / message / typing frames
└────────────────────────┘

Aelio SDK — @aelio/sdk

Runs in your backend. Expose your functions as LLM tools. Dials out to Aelio over WebSocket. Available on npm and PyPI.

Chat Widget — @aelio/chat

Embeddable chat UI for your website. Connects to /widget/ws. Install via npm or script tag.

Aelio Server — Docker

Agentic harness: LLM, safety, identity, memory, and channels. Runs as a single Docker container in your infra.

Core thesis

The 30-minute promise

A developer should be able to give their customers a chat experience on their preferred chat interface in under 30 minutes, with one SDK install, one YAML file, and one container.

Your auth, database, and business logic stay in your process. The SDK dials out to Aelio over WebSocket. The server never holds your API keys or calls your REST APIs directly.

What Aelio is not

Out of scope

Not a voice/telephony product — Aelio is text chat on your preferred chat interface. "Persona" refers to the assistant's tone, not phone calls.
Not an MCP/OpenAPI tool — Those solve developer-to-AI-agent. Aelio solves platform-to-end-customer.
Not a drag-and-drop chatbot builder — You define pipelines in YAML or SDK code and expose real backend functions. There is no visual flow editor UI.

For multi-stage onboarding, see Pipeline YAML Manifest.

Open source

Aelio is open source (Apache-2.0 intent). Self-host with Docker, or run locally for development. No vendor lock-in.