oolong

README

Oolong 🍵

Simple ephemeral chat — a fast, keyboard-driven terminal client for OpenAI models, built with Bubble Tea.

Conversations live in your terminal and nowhere else. Nothing is written to disk unless you explicitly save a transcript, and Oolong opts out of OpenAI's server-side response storage. Close the window and the chat is gone.

Features

• Streaming responses rendered as markdown with syntax-highlighted code blocks
• Ephemeral by design — history is kept in memory only, and requests are sent with response storage disabled on OpenAI's side
• Model picker with per-model pricing, plus a live token count and cost estimate in the chat header
• Image input — paste an image from the clipboard (ctrl+v) and it's attached to your next message
• System prompt editing in place (ctrl+p), without losing your message draft
• Transcript export — ctrl+s saves the conversation as a timestamped markdown file
• Keychain storage — your API key lives in the OS keychain (macOS Keychain, Windows Credential Manager, Linux Secret Service), not in a dotfile
• Readable math — LaTeX in responses is converted to plain Unicode instead of showing up as mangled backslashes

Install

go install github.com/dicedatalore/oolong@latest

Requires Go 1.26+ and cgo (used for clipboard support). On Linux you'll also need the X11 development headers:

sudo apt install libx11-dev   # Debian/Ubuntu

Or build from source:

git clone https://github.com/dicedatalore/oolong.git
cd oolong
go build
./oolong

Getting started

1. Run oolong.
2. On first run, paste your OpenAI API key. It's validated against the API (no tokens spent) and saved to your OS keychain. Alternatively, set OPENAI_API_KEY in your environment — it takes precedence over the keychain.
3. Pick a model and start chatting.

To remove a stored key: press ctrl+k on the model picker, or run oolong --reset-key.

Keybindings

Key	Action
enter	Send message
shift+enter / ctrl+j	Insert newline
ctrl+v	Paste (a clipboard image becomes an attachment)
ctrl+p	Edit the system prompt
ctrl+s	Save transcript to markdown
pgup / pgdn	Scroll the conversation
home / end	Jump to top / bottom
esc	Stop a streaming response, or go back to the model picker
ctrl+c	Stop a streaming response, or quit
?	Toggle full help

The mouse wheel scrolls the conversation too; hold shift while dragging to select text, as usual in TUIs.

Note: shift+enter requires a terminal with keyboard enhancement support (Kitty, Ghostty, WezTerm, foot, …). ctrl+j works everywhere.

Privacy

• Your API key is stored in the OS keychain, never in a plain-text file.
• Chat history exists only in process memory unless you save it with ctrl+s.
• Requests are sent with store: false, so OpenAI does not retain responses for the Responses API's server-side history.

Development

go test ./...

The UI is a Bubble Tea state machine with three screens — model picker, chat, and first-run key entry — each in its own file under internal/ui. Supporting packages: internal/openai (streaming client), internal/keystore (keychain), internal/mathfmt (LaTeX → Unicode), and internal/clipboard (image paste).

License

MIT