What it is:
A single binary chatbot interface that runs in the terminal. It’s not a coding agent, but just a friendly chat UI packed with lots of features you would want if that’s your use case.
It’s open source, of course.
Why it exists:
I wanted the conveniences of web-based chatbot UIs (user-editable messages, nice markdown rendering, etc.) in an app I can quickly fire up in a terminal.
Having built it, I use it a lot for ephemeral LLM uses I don’t want polluting my chat history or memory, and as an alternative to Poe’s godawful web UI.
How to use it:
Download your preferred build (Windows, Mac, Linux) from the releases page, uncompress it where you want it to live, and run it in a terminal. On macOS you’ll need to un-quarantine the binary (xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ./chabeau) as I’m not currently participating in the Apple Developer program (costs $, and I’m not a Mac user).
Releases are signed (commits by me, and builds by GitHub). If you prefer to build from source, you need the Rust toolchain; once you have that, cargo install chabeau should do the trick.
You need to configure an OpenAI-compatible provider (e.g. OpenAI itself, Poe, Venice, OpenRouter, etc.). chabeau provider add will get you started with a quick interactive flow. I’ve preconfigured common ones; suggestions for more built-ins welcome.
Chabeau stores tokens securely in the system keyring, which is why you may be prompted to unlock it.
What does it “feel” like:
This sub doesn’t allow images/videos, but here are a few MP4s:
- Using character cards (V2 format)
- Using themes
- Using MCP (while not a coding agent, Chabeau is a feature-rich MCP client, so you can connect it to databases, git repos, etc.).
Also, it has a friendly robot with a beret on its CRT head as its logo.
Some annoying things it can’t do yet:
- upload file attachments (next up)
- support for the new OpenAI Responses API (it uses the older completions API)
- use a subscription without an API key
- session suspend/resume (you can log, but it doesn’t track sessions yet)
- advanced character features (e.g., lorebooks).
Feedback welcome, I’ll keep an eye on this thread (provided it doesn’t get downvoted :-).
submitted by /u/xirzon
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