PicoChat

A lightweight terminal chat client for local and OpenAI-compatible LLM backends.

Introduction

PicoChat provides an interactive CLI workflow with multiline input, session history, structured output options, and image-capable prompts.

Key Features

• Interactive multiline chat input (Ctrl+D submit, Esc/Ctrl+C cancel)
• Session history save/load
• Multiple backend protocols (ollama, openai, responses)
• Output formatting (plain, json, json-pretty, yaml)
• Structured content generation via JSON schema
• Image prompt support
• Clipboard helpers and runtime commands

Installation

Build from source:

go mod download
go mod tidy
go test ./...
go build

On macOS, unsigned binaries may need quarantine removal:

sudo xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine ./picochat

Quick Start

Interactive mode:

./picochat

Pipe mode:

echo "Write a Haiku about Cheese" | ./picochat -quiet

Documentation

Detailed guides are in /docs:

• Usage Guide
• Configuration
• Output and Structured Content
• Image Processing
• Debug and Known Issues

Acknowledgements

• BurntSushi/toml
• atotto/clipboard
• mattn/go-runewidth

License

MIT