https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FGECgQlT3nCA%3Ffeature%3Doembed&display_name=YouTube&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DGECgQlT3nCA&image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FGECgQlT3nCA%2Fhqdefault.jpg&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube

 

In this penultimate stream of Brazil's Developer Passport, I was joined by former Developer Advocate and, now, Senior Outbound Product Manager, Maria Gabriela Waechter, to debut the new AI-native UI framework on ServiceNow: Lux! 

 

Lux is ServiceNow's new AI-native UI framework for the platform , built from the ground up so AI can surface natively in navigation and experience, not bolted on after the fact. Think one shell handling nav, home, search, and notifications, with your apps and workspaces loading inside it instead of getting replaced. It's already live under the hood: AI Control Tower and the EmployeeWorks Web App (formerly Employee Slate) are both built on Lux today. Here are some highlights from what we covered.

 

Built On Standards You Already Know

Gabby was blunt about the "why": ServiceNow didn't want to keep building on Angular 1 and Bootstrap 3.3.1 forever. Lux is built on LIT, Base UI, and Tailwind CSS — real open-source standards with native AI-assisted coding support. Practical upshot: you're hiring against the whole front-end market now, not a ServiceNow-niche subset. Widgets are LIT-based elements, written once and reused across every surface instead of reimplemented per workspace.

 

Two Ways To Build (Your Choice)

ServiceNow is meeting developers where they already work:

• Lux Lab : a more opinionated, integrated dev environment. If you're coming from Service Portal development, start here.
• Lux Lab for VS Code:  same platform, same AI skills, just living inside the VS Code extension you already use.

Both sit on top of the Now SDK , the shared toolchain for scaffolding, building, and deploying, plus there's a ServiceNow IDE powered by Build Agent tied into the same SDK. And yes, it's bring-your-own-LLM: Gabby's been building in Lux Lab with Claude, but Gemini and other endpoints work too.

 

Documentation is still catching up (a known gap the team is actively investing in), but the AI picks up a lot of the slack via a bundled skill file (.cloud/ai-ux-build/skill.md) that teaches your LLM how Lux experiences should be built.

 

The Lux Lab Demo

Gabby walked through building a business-approver portal live:

1. Plan mode : describe what you want ("a place for non-technical approvers to see and approve/reject records"), and LuxLab generates a work-item breakdown before writing any code. Approve it, or send it back — a nice checkpoint for looping in stakeholders before burning tokens.
2. Code mode : once approved, it scaffolds and builds the experience, with a live dev server you can preview locally before touching an instance.
3. Ship it : deploy to an instance once you're happy.

Then, because Developer Passport is allowed to have fun: Gabby showed off a matcha shop she built for herself, a full-blown Plants vs. Zombies interface, and a hot-pink "positive affirmations incident command center" complete with unicorns; proof that Lux can render pretty much anything you can describe.

 

Where Lux Fits With What You Already Have

Good news if you're deep in existing tooling — nothing's being ripped out from under you:

• UI Builder still manages configurable workspaces , no changes there.
• No plans to deprecate Workspaces or Angular Service Portals. Requester experiences on Service Portal are being evaluated for a move to Lux, but not until early 2027.
• Backwards compatible further than you'd expect — the VS Code extension already works on Zurich Patch 12 and Australia Patch 5+.
• Licensing: the base Lux framework is a platform feature available to everyone; the AI features on top of it depend on your SKU.

Timeline

Lux goes GA in Q4 2026 — that's also when full documentation lands and when you can expect it on PDIs. The VS Code extension is available right now for experimenting and extending AI Control Tower experiences (just don't push anything to production before GA). And if you're heading to now[dev]26 in San Jose (Nov 4–5), Gabby hinted there may be a Lux-specific lab so you can be among the first hands-on with the framework.

 

Recap

The big takeaways on Lux:

1. AI-native UI framework , successor to legacy ServiceNow frameworks, built on LIT/Base UI/Tailwind
2. Two build paths — LuxLab or LuxLab for VS Code — same AI skills either way
3. Plan mode → code mode workflow , with local preview before deploy
4. No deprecations — Workspaces and Service Portal keep working, Lux loads alongside them
5. GA + docs + PDIs , all landing in Q4 2026

Massive thanks to Gabby and her team for showing off just how far Lux can be pushed (unicorn incident command centers included). If you want to go deeper, reach out to your account rep for a Lux deep dive and start testing today with the VS Code extension.