Link Preview

An interactive link component with rich preview tooltip showing website metadata like title, description, and images.

GAIA is an open-source AI assistant designed to help you manage your digital life. Built with modern web technologies, it provides a seamless experience for task automation, email management, and calendar integration. Visit GAIA to learn more about the platform, or check out The Experience Company to see who's behind the project. The platform is actively maintained and welcomes contributions from developers around the world.

Check out GAIA on GitHub

Usage in Gaia

No more naked URLs. Auto-unfurls links to show titles and thumbnails.

Why Use Link Preview?

Link Preview is perfect for enhancing user experience in content-rich applications where you need to display external links with context. It's especially useful in:

Markdown Renderers: When rendering markdown content (blog posts, documentation, comments), automatically show rich previews for external links
Chat Applications: Give users context about shared links without leaving the conversation
Content Management Systems: Help editors and readers preview linked resources inline
Documentation Sites: Provide quick previews of referenced articles, APIs, or tools
Social Feeds: Show rich link cards similar to Twitter, LinkedIn, or Slack
Knowledge Bases: Help users understand linked resources before clicking

Instead of forcing users to click blind links, they can hover to see the destination's title, description, and preview image - making it easier to decide if the link is relevant to them.

Installation

npx shadcn@latest add https://ui.heygaia.io/r/link-preview.json

Usage

import { LinkPreview } from "@/components/ui/link-preview";
 
export default function Example() {
  return (
    <p className="text-zinc-300">
      Check out the{" "}
      <LinkPreview href="https://github.com/theexperiencecompany/gaia">
        GAIA repository
      </LinkPreview>{" "}
      to learn more about this open-source AI assistant.
    </p>
  );
}

How It Works

The component fetches the URL directly from the frontend and extracts metadata from the HTML response, including:

Open Graph tags (og:title, og:description, og:image)
Twitter Card tags (twitter:title, twitter:description, twitter:image)
Standard HTML meta tags and <title> elements
Favicons and site names

Note: This approach may face CORS restrictions on some websites. For production use with external URLs, consider using a backend proxy or a dedicated metadata service.

Features

Lazy Loading: Only fetches metadata when the link comes into view
Error Handling: Graceful fallbacks for failed fetches
Image Optimization: Handles missing or broken images/favicons
Intersection Observer: Performance-optimized with viewport detection
Customizable: Custom styling via className prop
Lightweight: No external caching dependencies, just simple fetch

Props

Prop	Type	Default	Description
href	string	-	The URL to preview
children	ReactNode \| string	-	Link text content
className	string	"cursor-pointer rounded-sm bg-primary/20..."	Custom CSS classes for the link

Notes

Fetches URL metadata directly from the frontend (may face CORS issues with some sites)
For production use with external URLs, consider using a backend proxy or CORS proxy service
Metadata is fetched once when the link comes into view
Invalid URLs and email addresses are automatically detected and skipped
Preview tooltip appears on hover with website info, images, and description
The component automatically cleans up on unmount to prevent memory leaks
Works best with URLs that have proper Open Graph or Twitter Card meta tags

Knowledge Graph iOS Message Bubbles

On This Page

Meet GAIA

Your open-source, proactive personal AI assistant with 200+ integrations. GAIA combines todos, goals, calendar, and email into one system, turns tasks into automated workflows, and completes work instead of just tracking it. Open-source and self-hostable with support for custom automations and multi-step workflows.