Company Answers: a cited Q&A page on your own content

The hello-world of Glean apps: one page, one input, one permission-aware cited answer — built two ways, with the Web SDK and with the Chat API.

~30 minBeginner

Problem

Every team has the same first Glean app: a single page where anyone can ask a company question and get a cited, permission-aware answer. There are two equally valid ways to build it — this recipe builds both, side by side, so you can pick the trade-off that fits your app.

Architecture

Company Answers pagesingle input + answer card

Path A: Web SDKrenderChat — Glean owns the UI

Path B: Chat APIchat.create — you own the UI

Gleanpermission-aware answers with citations

Prerequisites

A Glean instance with content indexed

For the Web SDK path: an existing Glean session in your normal browser

Node 20.19+ or 22.12+

Steps

1

Pick a path

Path A (Web SDK) renders Glean's own chat UI for you — fastest to stand up, no backend code. Path B (Chat API) calls the Chat API directly from your own backend — you own every pixel of the UI and the request/response shape. Both reach the same place: a permission-aware, cited answer.

Web SDK

1

Scaffold the project

npx -y tiged@2.12.8 --mode=git gleanwork/glean-cookbook/recipes/company-answers/web-sdk company-answers

2

Install dependencies

cd company-answers && npm install

3

Configure the tenant

Enter the user's work email when prompted. The shipped discovery command writes VITE_GLEAN_BACKEND to .env.local. Set VITE_GLEAN_INITIAL_MESSAGE to the topic they supplied.

cd company-answers && npm run configure -- --email "<work-email>"

4

Run it

Keep Vite running, report its exact Local URL, and wait for the user to open it in their normal signed-in browser. Never open or automate the URL yourself.

cd company-answers && npm run dev

5

Verify

Give the user the exact printed local URL to open in their normal signed-in browser. Ask them to try a topic they know exists in their Glean instance and confirm a real, cited answer renders inside Glean's chat UI.

Chat API

1

Scaffold the project

npx -y tiged@2.12.8 --mode=git gleanwork/glean-cookbook/recipes/company-answers/chat-api company-answers

2

Install dependencies

cd company-answers && npm install

3

Set credentials

The shipped command discovers the tenant from the user's work email, signs them in with OAuth, and writes the backend plus short-lived access token to ignored .env. Set GLEAN_DEMO_QUERY to the supplied topic. If tenant OAuth is unavailable, enter a CHAT-scoped API token as the fallback.

cd company-answers && npm run login -- --email "<work-email>"

4

Verify

Takes about 1–3 minutes. It starts its own server and checks the configured topic for a non-empty answer with deduplicated citations.

cd company-answers && npm run verify

5

Run it

Leave the verified app running at http://localhost:3000 and give that URL to the user.

cd company-answers && npm start

Take it further

• Swap in a specific agent by passing its agentId — to the chat component for Path A, or in the chat.create request for Path B.
• Stream responses instead of waiting for the full answer (both the Web SDK and the Chat API support streaming).
• Add follow-up prompt suggestions from the Chat API response's followUpPrompts.

Try it

What's our PTO policy?

Returns a non-empty answer with at least one citation carrying a real title and URL, drawn from your own indexed content.

How do I request time off?

Returns a non-empty answer with at least one citation carrying a real title and URL, drawn from your own indexed content.

Each of these was run against a live Glean instance on 2026-08-02.

• Choose your tool
  Install the plugin

  1

  claude plugin marketplace add gleanwork/glean-cookbook

  2

  claude plugin install cookbook@glean-cookbook

  Run the recipe

  /cookbook:company-answers

  Run /reload-plugins to pick it up without restarting.

View source

Runs the recipe through the Glean cookbook plugin.

At a glance

SurfacesClient API, API clients, Web SDK

StatusShowcase

Time~30 min

Required scopes

CHAT