kortalk

Korvus AI chat — part of the korvus family apps. A desktop AI chat for Linux: persistent multi-turn dialogs with Claude, OpenAI-compatible or local models, with session history, file/image attachments and in-conversation search. Lives in the tray, streams responses as they arrive. For a quick one-off question, a lightweight popup — in the spirit of Crow Translate — answers on selected text right near the cursor instead of opening the full window.

Features

• Dialog window — the main surface: a session list of saved conversations next to a single thread that keeps full multi-turn context (every earlier turn is resent to the provider), Ctrl+Enter to send, Ctrl+F to search the conversation (text and code blocks alike). A pinned "Quick questions" entry is always there too, for one-off messages that shouldn't accumulate context or get saved between restarts. Paste (Ctrl+V), drag and drop, or use the 📎 button to attach images and text files — they go to the model with your next message, on every provider including Claude Code CLI; click an image to open it full-size. A prompt's own provider/model choice (see "Prompt library" below) never overrides what's picked here.
• AI providers:
  • Claude Code CLI — via claude -p, no API key (default);
  • Anthropic API — official SDK, streaming (API key required);
  • OpenAI-compatible APIs — OpenAI, Ollama, LM Studio, OpenRouter, Groq, DeepSeek and any other service with /chat/completions (configured with base URL + model + key; local servers need no key).
• Prompt library — any number of named prompts in Settings, each with its own global hotkey and reachable from the tray submenu; one is marked as the default. A prompt can pin its popup to a specific provider/model, overriding whatever provider is active — handy for keeping a fast/cheap model on one hotkey and a stronger one on another — without touching the provider selected in the dialog window.
• Popup near the cursor — a quick, secondary way to get a one-off answer on selected text without opening the dialog window: select text with the mouse → press a hotkey → a small window with the streamed response appears right there. Rounded corners, Markdown rendering with highlighted code blocks, text selection/copying, draggable by the mouse and resizable from its edges. Always opens at the size configured in Settings; a manual resize sticks for that popup instead of snapping back as the answer keeps streaming in. Stays on top of every other window and only closes via its own ✕ button — losing focus or clicking outside it does nothing.
• Tray — the application is resident: a monochrome raven icon (Corvus — the korvus emblem), left click = open the dialog window, a menu with the prompt library, a popup with the selection, settings and quit.
• Global hotkeys inside the application — one prompt-to-key table in Settings → Prompts: each prompt has its own hotkey that opens the popup with that prompt and the current selection (the default prompt, "Explain", ships with Ctrl+Alt+C), plus a separate hotkey to open the dialog window (Ctrl+Alt+W by default). X11 — direct XGrabKey interception, Wayland — the system GlobalShortcuts portal. No external tools or DE configuration required.
• Graphical settings — prompts, hotkeys, theme, font, popup sizes, timeouts, a provider manager with keys, autostart at login, deleting all saved dialogs. The config is human-readable YAML (~/.config/kortalk/config.yaml).
• Theme and fonts — follows the environment theme (Qt) by default, optionally Nord Dark / Nord Light. The tray icon's own colour follows that same theme by default too, or can be pinned to dark/light regardless of it (Settings → General → "Tray icon") — the system tray's own background isn't always the same as the app's theme.
• Two interface languages — English (default) and Russian: Settings → General → Language.
• PRIMARY selection is read natively via Qt — xclip/xsel/wl-clipboard are not needed. Works on X11 and Wayland.

Installation

On X11 (most desktops — not needed on Wayland), Qt's own xcb platform plugin needs libxcb-cursor0 (Qt ≥ 6.5), which a minimal install may be missing:

sudo apt install libxcb-cursor0   # Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, ...
sudo dnf install xcb-util-cursor  # Fedora
sudo pacman -S xcb-util-cursor    # Arch

pipx install kortalk
kortalk --check     # diagnostics: providers, tray, PRIMARY selection

No other system packages or flags like --system-site-packages are required for pipx/pip itself — Qt (PySide6) comes from PyPI. The only external dependency is Claude Code CLI, and only if you use the claude-cli provider. kortalk itself checks for libxcb-cursor0 before starting and prints a plain error (instead of crashing) if it's still missing.

The config lives in ~/.config/kortalk/config.yaml and is edited via Settings (or by hand). Configs of older versions (toml/ini) are not used.

Usage

kortalk                       # start the daemon (tray + hotkeys)
kortalk --window              # dialog window (alias: --split)
kortalk --popup               # popup near the cursor (for scripts/external hotkeys)
kortalk "Translate to English:"   # popup with a one-off prompt
kortalk --provider ollama     # one-off request through a specific provider
kortalk --settings            # settings
kortalk --quit                # quit the running instance
kortalk --check               # diagnostics

The main scenario: kortalk starts the daemon, everything else is done from the tray and via global hotkeys. The CLI flags are kept for scripting — they are delivered to the running instance instantly over a local socket.

The popup's text is taken from the PRIMARY selection — selecting it with the mouse is enough, no Ctrl+C needed.

Hotkeys

Assigned in Settings → Prompts — the "Open window" hotkey at the top of the tab, and one hotkey per prompt in the list below it. All of them work globally:

• X11 — the application grabs the keys directly (XGrabKey), works in any WM/DE without configuration.
• Wayland — the XDG Desktop Portal (GlobalShortcuts) is used; GNOME/KDE will show a binding confirmation dialog. If the portal is not available (minimalist compositors) — use the tray or bind kortalk --popup to a hotkey in your compositor.

Provider setup

kortalk --settings → Providers tab. Examples:

The dialog window picks its provider from a dropdown; the popup uses the "active provider" by default, unless the prompt it was opened with pins its own (Settings → Prompts). One-off CLI requests take --provider <id>.

Autostart

Settings → General → "Start at login" — creates ~/.config/autostart/kortalk.desktop running kortalk.

Development

git clone https://github.com/r4ven-me/kortalk && cd kortalk
python -m venv .venv && . .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e '.[test]' ruff
ruff check .                        # linter
QT_QPA_PLATFORM=offscreen pytest    # tests (headless)
QT_QPA_PLATFORM=offscreen kortalk --check   # headless diagnostics

Layout: src/kortalk/ — app.py (CLI, tray, IPC), providers.py (AI workers), hotkeys.py (XGrabKey / portal), windows.py (dialog window and popup), settings_dialog.py, config.py, theme.py.

Logs of the running application: ~/.local/state/kortalk/kortalk.log (verbose output — the --debug flag).

Author

Ivan Cherniy — r4ven.me. Source: github.com/r4ven-me/kortalk.

Credits

The tray/window raven icon is based on the "raven" icon from SVG Repo, recoloured at runtime to match the active theme.

License

GNU General Public License v3.0 or later (GPL-3.0-or-later), see LICENSE.