Vite throws error starting with `@elevenlabs/client` 1.x

[Nickersoft]

Hey folks,

Didn't see this mentioned before and couldn't find an obvious breaking change for this in the package history, so wanted to share. Starting with the 1.x line of the client package, running my Vite dev server seems to error out over the imports of the package's barrel file. Does anyone know what changed to cause this error? Is there a fix required on my end?

Error when evaluating SSR module /src/routes/(app)/(authenticated)/(app)/chat/+page.svelte: Cannot find module '/Users/tjnickerson/Documents/GitHub/Nickersoft/hello-app/node_modules/@elevenlabs/client/dist/BaseConversation' imported from /Users/tjnickerson/Documents/GitHub/Nickersoft/hello-app/node_modules/@elevenlabs/client/dist/index.js
      at finalizeResolution (node:internal/modules/esm/resolve:275:11)
      at moduleResolve (node:internal/modules/esm/resolve:865:10)
      at defaultResolve (node:internal/modules/esm/resolve:991:11)
      at nextResolve (node:internal/modules/esm/hooks:785:28)
      at o (file:///Users/tjnickerson/Documents/GitHub/Nickersoft/hello-app/node_modules/@tailwindcss/node/dist/esm-cache.loader.mjs:1:69)
      at nextResolve (node:internal/modules/esm/hooks:785:28)
      at AsyncLoaderHooksOnLoaderHookWorker.resolve (node:internal/modules/esm/hooks:269:30)
      at MessagePort.handleMessage (node:internal/modules/esm/worker:251:24)
      at [nodejs.internal.kHybridDispatch] (node:internal/event_target:843:20)
      at MessagePort.<anonymous> (node:internal/per_context/messageport:23:28)

[kraenhansen]

The root cause is a change from distributing a bundle to distributing source files (#601) and this side-effect is definitely not intentional.

To keep the changes minimal I choose to keep the existing extension-less imports and since the ElevenAgents SDK is intended for client-side use, I assumed everyone would be using a bundler when importing it, which would be fine. But for Vite SSR specifically, that's not the default configuration.

As a workaround until the missing .js extensions are added to the dist output, you can force Vite to bundle the @elevenlabs packages instead of externalizing them to Node's native ESM resolver:

// vite.config.js
export default defineConfig({
  ssr: {
    noExternal: [/^@elevenlabs\//],
  },
});

In SvelteKit, the most idiomatic fix would probably be to move the import inside onMount, which never runs on the server:

<script>
  import { onMount } from 'svelte';

  onMount(async () => {
    const { Conversation } = await import('@elevenlabs/client');
    // start session, etc.
  });
</script>

Even with these workarounds, I agree this is not the intended DX and I'll follow up with a proper fix for this. Thanks for bringing this to our attention 💙