CustomChat

A chat app over your documents, set up with one YAML file. Answers cite their sources. Starts in offline Demo mode: no key, account or paid calls.

Start

No Python, Git or uv needed. Open Terminal (macOS/Linux) or PowerShell (Windows) and run:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Harsh23Kashyap/customchat/main/start.sh | sh

& { $f = Join-Path ([IO.Path]::GetTempPath()) ([IO.Path]::GetRandomFileName() + '.ps1'); try { Invoke-WebRequest https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Harsh23Kashyap/customchat/main/start.ps1 -OutFile $f; & powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File $f } finally { Remove-Item $f -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue } }

The app opens in your browser (or open the printed localhost URL). Ctrl+C stops it. Run the same command in the same folder to come back to your chats. Review start.sh or start.ps1 before running downloaded scripts.

Have uv? uvx customchat-app start

Prefer pip? In an empty folder:

python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/python -m pip install customchat-app
.venv/bin/python -m customchat start

On Windows use py -3 -m venv .venv and .\.venv\Scripts\python.exe. The package is customchat-app; customchat on PyPI is a different project. Both install paths use an isolated environment, so nothing touches your system Python.

Make it yours

uvx customchat-app start --directory my-chat

Edit my-chat/app.yaml, add documents, and open Configuration to pick a model, look and sources. Keep keys in environment variables or the private local store, never in YAML or Git. Add --lock-config for a chat-only app. See the configuration reference.

Features

• Upload files or add web links. Reads PDF, text/code, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, ODT and, with Tesseract, images.
• Quick, Standard and Deep answer modes.
• Saved chats with bounded history, a temporary chat mode and an optional profile.
• Themes, light/dark, logo, animated emojis and a live preview.
• Budget limits, document freshness checks and a portable app export.

Demo is the default. Choose and test a live provider in Configuration to use paid or local models.

More

Install options · Hosting · Architecture · Tests: python -m unittest discover -s tests

Counterpart of Custom-Nerd. Harsh Kashyap, Shela Wu. Advisor: Dennis Shasha. MIT license.