🧠 Unofficial ChatGPT API Node.js

A developer-focused Node.js + Puppeteer-powered backend that exposes an unofficial OpenAI ChatGPT API by automating browser interaction with chat.openai.com—ideal for local testing, prompt chaining, and AI chatbot exploration without using official API keys.

🚀 Why This Project?

While OpenAI’s official APIs are powerful, they come with rate limits, cost barriers, and limited conversation thread support. This project enables developers to:

• Use their personal ChatGPT account to interact with ChatGPT programmatically.
• Automate login and session persistence using Puppeteer and stealth plugins.
• Send prompts and get responses in a structured, customizable format.
• Mimic reasoning and web search modes for enhanced answers (optional).
• Simulate a local API-like development flow for chatbot prototyping and AI experimentation.

Note

“Reliance on UI behavior can cause this API to be unreliable in production; it is recommended for local use only, but I'm continually working to make it more robust."

🧰 Tech Stack

• Node.js (Express) – API service
• Puppeteer + Stealth Plugin – ChatGPT automation
• dotenv – Credential & config management
• HTML parsing (in-progress) – To extract & process response
• CORS, Body-Parser – Clean JSON APIs

🛠️ Setup Guide

1. 📦 Clone & install dependencies

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/roxylius/ChatGPT_unofficial_API_Node.git

# Move to the repo folder
cd ChatGPT_unofficial_API_Node

# Install all dependencies
npm install

2. ⚙️ Configure environment variables

Note: Google Auth support is not added, Signup and generate email/password for auth

Create a .env file at the project root:

OPENAI_EMAIL=your-chatgpt-login-email
OPENAI_PASSWORD=your-chatgpt-password

Replace chatgpt-login-email and your-chatgpt-password with your actual OpenAI account credentials.

3. ▶️ Run the server

Start the server by running:

node server.js

or

npm run dev

The server runs at http://localhost:3001/ and will confirm “Server is up and Running……”.

🧪 Example Test Prompt

Run a test interaction:

npm run test

Test workflow:

🌐Launch Chrome -> 📁Load Chrome-user-data -> 🔐Login -> ✉️Send Prompt -> ⏳Poll Response -> 📄Extract Text -> 💬Return JSON

🔁 API Endpoints

POST /api/prompt

As of latest ChatGPT update, reason automatically searches when required no need for both, only use Search when no Reasoning is required

• Description: Sends a prompt to ChatGPT and retrieves the response.
• Request Body:

{
  "prompt": "Your prompt here",
  "options": { 	// this object is optional 
    "reason": false,
    "search": true,
    "threadId": "optional_thread_id"
  }
}

or

{
  "prompt": "Your prompt here"
}

Field	Type	Description	Required
prompt	String	The text prompt to send to ChatGPT.	Yes
options.reason	Boolean	Enables Reason mode (default: false).	No
options.search	Boolean	Enables Search mode (default: false).	No
options.threadId	String	Specifies an existing conversation thread ID.	No

• Response:

{
  "threadId": "the_thread_id",
  "response": "The response from ChatGPT"
}

Field	Type	Description
threadId	String	The ID of the conversation thread.
response	String	The cleaned response from ChatGPT.

Sample Response:

{
  "threadId": "681a6cba-c0fc-8004-977c-f34adf806988",
  "response": "Why don't scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything!"
}

Note: Response times may vary based on prompt complexity and ChatGPT’s server load. Parsing may occasionally be inconsistent, particularly in Reason mode.

📂 Key Components & Dictory Tree

.
├── chrome-user-data/      # Persists browser session data (cookies, localStorage)
├── src/
│   ├── flows/
│   │   ├── basic-login.js   # Handles email/password login automation
│   │   └── prompt-flow.js   # Handles sending prompts and polling for responses
│   ├── services/
│   │   └── puppeteer-services.js # Manages shared Puppeteer browser and page instances
│   ├── utils/
│   │   └── helpers.js       # Utility functions (e.g., login check, timeouts)
│   └── views/
│       ├── login.js         # Express router for login-related endpoints
│       └── prompt.js        # Express router for prompt-related endpoints
├── .env                   # Environment variables (OpenAI credentials, Port)
├── .env.example           # Example environment file
├── example-test.js        # Standalone test script for Puppeteer automation
├── feature.md             # List of features and bug fixes
├── insights.md            # Important notes and observations
├── package.json           # Project metadata and dependencies
├── routes.js              # Main Express router configuration
├── server.js              # Main application entry point, starts Express server and Puppeteer
└── README.md              # This file

🔧 Planned Features

• Add markdown/HTML parser for formatted output
• Add file/image support
• Improve “Reason” mode polling
• Signup support
• Enhanced thread context management

⚠️ Known Issues

• Small viewport may trigger mobile view and change behavior.
• “Reason” mode writes to alternate DOM nodes. [Not working Currently!]
• Some long responses split across multiple elements.

📊 Workflow Diagram

graph TD
A[Client Request] -->|/api/prompt| B[Express Server]
B --> C{Check Auth?}
C -->|Yes| D[Use existing session]
C -->|No| E[Run Login Flow]
E --> F[Persist Session]
F --> G[Load ChatGPT Page]
D --> G
G --> H[Inject Prompt]
H --> I[Poll for Response]
I --> J[Extract Response HTML/Text]
J --> K[Return JSON to Client]

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👩‍💻 Author

Developed with ☕ by Roxylius

📄 License

MIT License