Newcomers install the wrong package constantly. The map:
- ai: the core. streamText, generateText, tool, ToolLoopAgent, convertToModelMessages, createUIMessageStreamResponse, DefaultChatTransport, telemetry. The Vercel AI Gateway provider ships inside ai.
- @ai-sdk/openai, @ai-sdk/anthropic, @ai-sdk/google, @ai-sdk/xai, @ai-sdk/azure, @ai-sdk/amazon-bedrock, @ai-sdk/google-vertex, @ai-sdk/mistral, @ai-sdk/groq, @ai-sdk/deepseek, and more: provider packages. One per provider. Install only the ones you use.
- @ai-sdk/react, @ai-sdk/svelte, @ai-sdk/vue, @ai-sdk/solid, @ai-sdk/angular: UI framework bindings. useChat, useCompletion, useObject live here, not in ai.
- @ai-sdk/otel: OpenTelemetry integration for telemetry. @ai-sdk/mcp: MCP client support.
Version facts that bite:
1. Framework packages have independent majors. In the ai 7 era, @ai-sdk/react is 4.x, @ai-sdk/svelte is 5.x, @ai-sdk/vue is 4.x. There is no @ai-sdk/react@7. Install @latest and check its declared ai peer.
2. The old community packages (ai/openai style imports) are long gone. Since v4 everything is @ai-sdk/* scoped. Tutorials importing from 'ai/openai' are stale.
3. Provider packages depend on @ai-sdk/provider and @ai-sdk/provider-utils. Mismatched provider majors against ai cause UnsupportedModelVersionError and LanguageModelV1 type errors. Upgrade them together.
4. The application package is named ai, not @ai-sdk/ai. Import errors from 'ai'; provider-level errors can also come from '@ai-sdk/provider' directly.
5. Keep zod at ^4.1.8 or later. The SDK's tool and object schemas assume it, and older zod tanks TypeScript performance.