Show HN: YakGPT – A locally running, hands-free ChatGPT UI

Nice. It took about a minute to clone it, run it, enter my API key, and get started. The speech-to-text worked flawlessly.

Most people can talk faster than they can type, but they can read faster than other people can talk. So an interface where I speak but read the response is an ideal way of interfacing with ChatGPT.

What would be nice is if I didn't have to press the mic button to speak -- if it could just tell when I was speaking (perhaps by saying "hey YakGPT"). But I see how that might be hard to implement.

Would love to hook this up to some smart glasses with a heads-up display where I could speak and read the response.

anonzzzies · 2 years ago

> Most people can talk faster than they can type

Most people I know type faster than they can talk. Also more accurate. I find talking a horrible interface to a computer while sitting down. On the move it is another story entirely of course.

By the way, chatgpt is not very fast either, so usually I type something in the chat and continue working while it generates the response.

> smart glasses

I just tried that; it works quite well, however, pressing the mic button kind of messes up that experience.

chenxi9649 · 2 years ago

Normal/average talking is ~150 WPM. Average typing speed is about 60-70. Is a 150+WPM a requirement to become anonzzies' friend?

thelittleone · 2 years ago

The advantage of course is your not tied to a keyboard / desk. So one could potentially be doing Internet research while hiking.

xupybd · 2 years ago

It wasn't so smooth for me.

I gave up at

Creating an optimized production build ...TypeError: Cannot read properties of null (reading 'useRef')

johnchristopher · 2 years ago

Oh, my install failed at:

    Failed to compile.

    pages/index.tsx
    `next/font` error:
    Failed to fetch `Inter` from Google Fonts.


    > Build failed because of webpack errors

Apparently because it can't fetch a font from Google. There should be assets that are critical (js/ts code, templates,css) and assets that are not (freaking fonts) to a yarn build.

edit: hacketyfixey, let's punch the thing in the face until it works:

    ./pages/index.tsx:
    2:  // import { Inter } from "next/font/google";
    12: // const inter = Inter({ subsets: ["latin"] });

(I am sorry)

I love the concept of this and other alternate ChatGPT UIs, but I hesitate to use them and pay for my calls when I could use chat.openai.com for free.

Any chance you could integrate the backend-api, and let me paste in my Bearer token from there?

kami8845 · 2 years ago

Hey! I definitely understand the reservation. This is definitely me as well. My reasons for using the UI at this point:

* GPT-4 is decently faster when talking straight to the API

* The API is so stupidly cheap that it's basically a rounding error for me. Half an hour of chatting to GPT3.5 costs me $0.02

Would be curious what you mean by integrating the backend-api?

qwertox · 2 years ago

GPT-3.5 is really cheap (prompt and completion = $0.002 / 1K tokens), but GPT-4 is around 20 times more expensive (prompt = $0.03 / 1K tokens + completion = $0.06 / 1K tokens).

But the benefit from using the API is that you can change the model on the fly, so you chat with 3.5 until you notice that it's not responding properly and, with all the history you have (probably stored in your database), you can send a bigger request with a probably better response once with GPT-4 as the selected model.

I really wish the interface on chat.openai.org would allow me to switch between models in the same conversation in order to 1) not use up your quota of GPT-4 interactions per 3 hours as quickly and 2) not strain the backend unnecessarily when you know that starting a conversation with GPT-3.5 is efficient enough until you notice that you better switch models.

OpenAI already has this implemented: When you use up your quota of GPT-4 chats, it offers you to drop down into GPT-3.5 in that same conversation.

robopsychology · 2 years ago

How is it that cheap?! I ran three queries on langchain yesterday with two ConstitionalPrompts and it cost $0.22 - made me realize deploying my project for cheap could be expensive quick.

agotterer · 2 years ago

I’d love to see a comparison of the average cost to use this with the OpenAI API versus subscribing to chat-gpt plus.

Maybe I’ll have to try this for a month and see if it end up costing more than $20. Thanks for creating it!

joenot443 · 2 years ago

Wow! Is it really that cheap? GPT4 is much more expensive, I imagine?

1xdevloper · 2 years ago

You can try the extension I built [0] which uses your existing ChatGPT session to send requests.

[0] https://sublimegpt.com

unitg · 2 years ago

The overlay option is great .. Any chance for a firefox version?

Karunamon · 2 years ago

Remember that using the API comes with privacy guarantees that using the chatGPT site does not. tldr; anything sent through the API won't be used to train the model and will be deleted after a month.

https://help.openai.com/en/articles/5722486-how-your-data-is...

kami8845 · 2 years ago

This is a good point I'll add!

Deleted Comment

jwarden · 2 years ago

JimmyRuska · 2 years ago

I tried it, it looks good! I had to modify the code to accept 8000 tokens for chatGPT. It would be good if it saved the json payload of the responses as well.

It uses 2 external calls to a javascript CDN for the microphone package and something else. It would probably be best if it was localhost calls only since it handles an API key

hypercube33 · 2 years ago

What'd you modify I'm curious?

FriedPickles · 2 years ago

teawrecks · 2 years ago

> Run locally on browser – no need to install any applications

That's not what "run locally" means. This isn't any more "local" than talking to chatgpt directly, which is never running locally.

Hey, run locally in this case means: YakGPT has no backend. Whether you use the react app through https://yakgpt.vercel.app/ or run it on your own machine, I store none of your data. I will try and make this wording clearer!

NBJack · 2 years ago

In that case you're basically offering a browser-based client. 'Locally' strongly suggests this is running entirely on the machine (vs. making API calls). Going to break a lot of hearts out there with the wording as it is.

rafael09ed · 2 years ago

It is more local than talking to chat GPT directly. Open AI stores all your requests on their server. This saves it on your computer. The title also claims it's a UI which always, for now, runs locally.

blairanderson · 2 years ago

Honestly your "idea generator" blew my mind. Would love to see a section that includes a larger catalog of prefilled prompts.

I'm thinking: What would a GPT project manager do? What would a GPT money manager do? What would a GPT logistics manager do? GPT Data Analyst, Etc.

meghan_rain · 2 years ago

> Please enter your OpenAI key

...

Do people just not get it?

I would in fact rather give all my company secrets to this random dude than OpenAI.

iib · 2 years ago

There are instructions on how to run the GUI from localhost, and the title and even the phrase that has the link to their own hosting tell you you can run it locally first.

It seems they are genuine, and they phrase it exactly as it is. The only thing I would have maybe wanted to see in the title is "open-source" or free software.

runnerup · 2 years ago

Everything still gets sent to OpenAI. “Locally hosted” means the UI, not the AI.

asow92 · 2 years ago

Love the idea of prompt dictation. Taking that idea a step further, would it possible to have a feature where ChatGPT responses are spoken back to the user?

pibefision · 2 years ago

War Games

mthoms · 2 years ago

"Do you want to play a game?"

smusamashah · 2 years ago

This is fast. And talking to it is a nice touch. Consider adding text to speech too :)

One feature I am missing from all these front ends is the ability to edit your text and generate new response from that point. Official chat gpt UI is the only one that seems to do that.

danielbln · 2 years ago

Chat-with-gpt has that, we use it in our org as an alternative chatgpt Interface: https://github.com/cogentapps/chat-with-gpt

In official UI, if you edit a message and get a new response, you can still always go back to any of your previous messages and continue from there on. Basically the history is like a tree in official UI. History in all other frontends including this one is linear.

ilovepuppies · 2 years ago

I've never seen this one before. It has several features I've been looking for. Has it been working well for your organization?

tluyben2 · 2 years ago

I added whisper to that (was merged) so you can talk to it as well.

Hey! You can edit past messages you've submitted and they will generate a new response that overwrites whatever happened in the conversation previously. If you're talking about a tree-like struct where you can have different branches, then true, only the official UI has it AFAIK :)