Show HN: Chie – a cross-platform, native, and extensible desktop client for LLMs

[zcbenz]

I'm submitting this before going to bed, so by the time it hits front page (if it does at all) I'll likely be asleep, so I won't be able to answer questions in time.

[steeve]

I advise you not to look up what it means in french.

[zcbenz]

I actually asked ChatGPT what chie might mean in other languages, for multiple times, but it did not tell me this :(

[cbenz]

Sorry, too late, I'm french.

[iamjackg]

Looks great! Very excited to try this out. At first glance I have one concern and one suggestion:

Concern: you mention it supports the actual ChatGPT Web API -- isn't this against their terms of service? I'd be wary of publishing something that hits internal APIs.

Suggestion: I would rename what you call the "ChatGPT" (non-web) part of the backend to "OpenAI API" instead. There is already enough confusion in the world between ChatGPT and API access to the underlying GPT models.

[capableweb]

> Concern: you mention it supports the actual ChatGPT Web API -- isn't this against their terms of service? I'd be wary of publishing something that hits internal APIs.

There seems to be two extensions, one called "chatgpt" and one called "chatgpt-web" (https://github.com/chieapp/chie/tree/main/src/extensions). The latter seems to be using https://chat.openai.com/backend-api/conversation which is OpenAI's private API for ChatGPT. Using this (as a user) seems to be able to get you banned, as far as I can tell by some reddit posts as of late.

However, the extension called "chatgpt" seems to correctly use the right endpoint: https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions, but it's not ChatGPT anymore when you use it, so the naming is a bit confusing as you said.

[pjmlp]

Kudos for taking the effort of not being yet another Electron app.

[clarkmcc]

Shameless plug for my version of this, also written in Rust: https://github.com/clarkmcc/chitchat

[qwerty456127]

Hi. This is the first time I'm trying an external app. I created an ChatGPT API key and configured it in Chie.

Once I tried asking ChatGPT it immediately replied "You exceeded your current quota, please check your plan and billing details" which I can't believe is the case.

I then tried to press the copy button over this reply to paste it here but that raises an error: "TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'content') at #copyTextAt (chieapp.exe\asar\dist\view\chat-view.js:1:11362).

[nickthegreek]

Your 'future plan' section says you want provide a subscription plan for gpt-4. Why would I pay a subscription to access my other subscription, especially when its a feature you currently offer for free. I feel like a one time fee to unlock access to premium models could be a better option. You will need to differentiate from your main free competition, chatboxai, to get a meaningful userbase like you have stated you want.

[ricklamers]

The UI toolkit it uses is Yue which I hadn’t heard of: https://libyue.com/docs/latest/js/

[iFire]

GPL3 License https://github.com/chieapp/chie/blob/main/LICENSE

[homarp]

Chie is currently licensed under the GPLv3, it will be relicensed to the MIT license on March 20th, 2028 (5 years after the first commit). I take this approach to discourage closed-source software from taking advantage of my work before it gets enough impacts.

Due to the future relicense, contributors will be asked to sign an agreement.

https://github.com/chieapp/chie#license

[stavros]

This looks nice! It says it's not an Electron app, but GitHub says it's written in TypeScript, so what UI toolkit does it use?

EDIT: Never mind this is mentioned in the technical details link, thanks!

[hedgehog]

I tried it and got the error "You exceeded your current quota, please check your plan and billing details."

[Oranguru]

Great job!

In the future, would you add support for local LLMs, such as LLaMa?

[broast]

I like how it's now a feature to not be an electron or webview app.

[nateb2022]

That was kind of a lie, however.

> NOT a webview wrapper of web pages.

but further down the page:

> The chat messages are rendered in a system webview. To minimize performance penalty the webview only renders a static HTML page with very limited JavaScript code.

[cchance]

would be cool if there was a plugin for petals (https://petals.dev/)

[chillbill]

so it is in a large part a web view

> The chat messages are rendered in a system webview.

[zcbenz]

I would argue it is not a large part a webview. The webview related code is 900 lines vs the whole project 10k lines.