AI Chat

A self-hosted AI chat web app with streaming responses, Markdown and code rendering, chat history, local memory retrieval, optional web search, and admin-only desktop control and file management tools.

Features

• AI chat with SSE streaming, stop generation, continue generation, regenerate, message copy, and code-block copy.
• Conversation history with create, switch, rename, and delete support.
• Local memory library powered by Ollama embeddings, so memory retrieval can stay on your machine.
• Context management with token-budget trimming, older-message summarization, and relevant memory injection.
• Optional web search through Tavily, disabled by default.
• Admin-only tools for remote control, terminal access, and Finder-style file management.
• Responsive UI modes for desktop browsers, mobile browsers, Android WebView, and a macOS WebView client.

Tech Stack

• Node.js + Express
• SQLite + better-sqlite3
• Plain HTML/CSS/JavaScript
• OpenAI-compatible chat providers
• Ollama for local embeddings

Quick Start

npm install
cp .env.example .env
mkdir -p ~/.ai-chat

Create ~/.ai-chat/secrets.env for private secrets:

JWT_SECRET=replace-with-a-long-random-string
DEEPSEEK_API_KEY=sk-your-key

Adjust non-secret settings in .env as needed, then start the server:

npm start

For development, run the source files directly so old build artifacts do not hide your changes:

npm run dev

Scripts

npm run check
npm run build
npm run smoke:startup
npm run smoke:auth

Configuration

• Keep private secrets out of the repository. Store them in ~/.ai-chat/secrets.env.
• Use .env.example for public, non-secret configuration examples.
• Chat model providers are configured in providers.json.
• API keys should be referenced through environment-variable placeholders.
• Local memory embeddings use Ollama by default with nomic-embed-text:latest.

Security Notes

• data/, logs, databases, backup files, build artifacts, and local secret files are ignored by Git.
• Control, terminal, and Finder routes must be protected by backend admin checks. Frontend hiding is not a security boundary.
• Use a strong JWT_SECRET in production. Do not use development defaults.

License

MIT