pengy 1.3.9

Local-first AI agent with tools — GUI and CLI

Pengy 🐧

A local-first AI agent with tools. Desktop GUI, web UI, and command-line — all backed by the same agent core, talking to any OpenAI-compatible API.

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What is Pengy?

Pengy is an LLM agent that runs on your own machine. It connects to OpenAI, Ollama, vLLM, Groq, OpenRouter, or any local endpoint, and gives the model a set of tools to operate on your filesystem, run code, search the web, and fetch URLs — all with your approval.

Three interfaces, one agent:

🐧 Pengy Desktop	🐧 Pengy CLI	🐧 Pengy Web
Qt6 GUI with markdown rendering, multi-session sidebar, file attachments	Terminal REPL with slash commands, single-shot mode for scripting	Flask web UI with Bootstrap, responsive layout, SSE live streaming

All three share the same core — same tools, same chat history, same config. Use whichever fits your flow.

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Quick Start

Install

Pengy requires Python 3.10+. On macOS, the default /usr/bin/python3 may be too old, so the recommended install method is uv, which can install Pengy with a compatible Python automatically:

# Install uv if needed
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

# Everything (GUI + CLI + Web)
uv tool install "pengy[all]"

# CLI only
uv tool install "pengy[cli]"

# GUI only
uv tool install "pengy[gui]"

# Web UI only
uv tool install "pengy[web]"

If you already have Python 3.10+ available, pip also works:

# Everything (GUI + CLI + Web)
pip install "pengy[all]"

# CLI only
pip install "pengy[cli]"

# GUI only
pip install "pengy[gui]"

# Web UI only
pip install "pengy[web]"

# Minimum (no GUI, no CLI — use as a library)
pip install pengy

Desktop GUI

pengy

CLI (interactive)

pengy-cli

CLI (single-shot)

pengy-cli "What is the capital of France?"
pengy-cli "List all files in /tmp"

Web UI

# Localhost only (default)
pengy-web

# Listen on all interfaces (for nginx reverse proxy)
pengy-web --host 0.0.0.0

# Custom port
pengy-web --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8080

The web UI is designed for single-user personal use. For remote access, put it behind nginx with SSL and HTTP basic auth — Pengy itself has no authentication.

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Features

• OpenAI-compatible — Works with OpenAI, Ollama, vLLM, LM Studio, OpenRouter, Groq, or any local endpoint
• 11 built-in tools — Read, write, and edit files; run bash (with sudo support) and Python code; search the web and fetch URLs; explore directory trees and search codebases
• Agentic workflow — The LLM can call multiple tools per turn, chaining them to accomplish complex tasks
• Tool confirmation — Three modes: YOLO (All) skips all confirmations, Safe auto-approves read-only tools, None confirms everything
• Context management — Elide old tool results to save context window space; configurable per-chat
• Token usage display — See prompt/completion token counts after every turn (GUI sidebar + CLI footer)
• Theme system — System, light, and dark modes plus selectable accent colors; applied across the desktop UI with scaled markdown/code rendering
• Tasks system — Reusable prompt templates for repeated workflows, with %placeholder% inputs collected at run time
• Model discovery — Fetch available models from your endpoint with one click or /models command
• Multi-session — Create, switch, and delete chat sessions; history saved locally as JSON; shared across all interfaces
• File attachments — GUI: attach files from the input bar; CLI: use /attach <path> or @path inline syntax
• Web UI — Responsive Bootstrap interface served by Flask; SSE live streaming; works great on mobile
• Slash commands (CLI) — /new, /load, /models, /yolo, /model, /list, /delete, /attach, /compact, and more
• Templated system message — Auto-fills {date}, {username}, {hostname}, {osinfo} at send time
• Persistent config — Settings, task templates, and chat history live in ~/.config/pengy/, shared between GUI, CLI, and Web — and across all Pengy versions (Python, Rust, C++)

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Screenshots

Main chat UI	Settings / theme controls	Tasks templates

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Configuration

Desktop: Click ⚙ Settings in the sidebar.
CLI: Run /config to view, /model <name> to switch models.
Web: Click ⚙ in the top-right navbar.

Setting	Description
Base URL	API endpoint (e.g. http://localhost:11434/v1 for Ollama)
API Key	Your API key (or anything for local endpoints)
Model	Model name, e.g. gpt-4o, llama3, gemma
System Message	Supports {date}, {username}, {hostname}, {osinfo} placeholders
Tool Confirmation	YOLO (All) / Safe Only / None — controls which tools require approval
Theme Mode (GUI)	System / Light / Dark — System follows the OS palette
Accent Color (GUI)	Default, Blue, Teal, Green, Orange, Red, Pink, or Purple
UI Scale (GUI)	75 / 100 / 125 / 150 / 175 / 200 % — restart for full native-widget scaling

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Theme System

The desktop UI includes a theme system built around two choices:

• Mode: System, Light, or Dark. System follows the current OS/Qt palette.
• Accent: Default, Blue, Teal, Green, Orange, Red, Pink, or Purple. The accent drives buttons, links, focus rings, selection colours, and other highlights.

Theme settings are saved in ~/.config/pengy/settings.json as theme_mode, theme_accent, and ui_scale, so they travel with the rest of your local Pengy configuration. The renderer also scales explicit markdown, code, and input fonts so the chat view tracks the configured UI scale instead of only resizing native widgets.

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Tasks

Tasks are reusable prompt templates for workflows you repeat often — for example summarizing a YouTube video, drafting a release note, or running a standard code-review checklist. Open Tasks from the desktop sidebar to create, edit, delete, or play templates.

A task has a title and a prompt template. Use %placeholder% tokens anywhere in the template to ask for values when the task is played:

Summarize this YouTube video: %Youtube Video URL%
Always use the youtube transcription skill.

When you click ▶ Play, Pengy asks for each unique placeholder once, renders the final prompt, and sends it through the normal chat path so tools, skills, history, and confirmation settings all work exactly like a hand-written prompt. Tasks are stored locally in ~/.config/pengy/tasks.json and are shared by the Python, Rust, and C++ editions.

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Tools

Pengy gives the LLM these tools to operate on your machine:

Tool	Description
read_file / read_multiple_files	Read one or more files at once
write_file	Write or overwrite a file
replace_in_file	Targeted text replacement (safer than full rewrites)
run_bash	Execute shell commands (configurable timeout; sudo password dialog)
run_python	Execute Python code (uses the same interpreter/venv as Pengy)
web_search	DuckDuckGo web search
download_file	Download a URL to ~/Downloads/
fetch_url	Fetch a URL's text content into context
directory_tree	Visual directory structure listing
search_content	Regex search across files in a codebase

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Skills

The 11 built-in tools cover the basics, but Pengy is designed to be extended with skills — your own custom instructions and scripts stored as plain markdown files.

Skills are not a plugin system. There is no SDK, no manifest file, no packaging. A skill is just a skillname/skillname_skill.md file with instructions Pengy can read, optionally backed by a bash or Python script. You point Pengy at a directory of these, and it uses them automatically.

This means your Pengy can do whatever you need it to:

• Fetch weather from an API
• Control devices on your home network
• Query your local databases
• Generate reports from your own data
• Run system administration tasks
• Send notifications, emails, or messages
• Anything you can describe in a prompt and a script

Skills are also self-authoring — you can ask Pengy to create new skills for you, write the markdown, write the script, and update the skill index, all in one conversation.

📖 Read the full guide: skills/README.md — covers the philosophy, how skills work, 4 complete examples with code, how to make your own, and a call to action to build your first skill.

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API Compatibility

Service	Base URL
OpenAI	https://api.openai.com/v1
Ollama	http://localhost:11434/v1
LM Studio	http://localhost:1234/v1
vLLM	http://localhost:8000/v1
OpenRouter	https://openrouter.ai/api/v1
Groq	https://api.groq.com/openai/v1

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Project Structure

pengy/
├── main.py              # Desktop GUI entry point
├── cli/
│   └── main.py          # CLI entry point (interactive + single-shot)
├── assets/
│   └── icon.png         # App icon
├── core/
│   ├── config.py        # Settings load/save + system message templating
│   ├── chat_manager.py  # Chat session CRUD
│   ├── task_manager.py  # Task template CRUD + placeholder rendering
│   ├── llm_client.py    # API client (generator protocol for tool handling)
│   └── tools.py         # Tool definitions and execution
├── ui/
│   ├── main_window.py   # Main window; wires all signals
│   ├── chat_history.py  # Sidebar chat list + quick settings
│   ├── chat_view.py     # Markdown chat renderer
│   ├── chat_input.py    # Input field + file attachment
│   ├── chat_worker.py   # Background thread driving the LLM generator
│   ├── settings_dialog.py  # Settings dialog
│   ├── tasks_dialog.py     # Task template manager/player
│   └── theme.py            # Light/dark/accent theme system
└── web/
    ├── app.py           # Flask application (routes, WebWorker, SSE)
    ├── main.py          # Web entry point (argparse, app.run)
    └── templates/
        ├── base.html    # Navbar, sidebar, Bootstrap layout
        ├── chat.html    # Chat view + JS SSE client
        └── settings.html # Settings form

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Development

Install from source

git clone https://github.com/patw/pengy.git
cd pengy
uv sync --extra all

Or, with Python 3.10+ already available:

pip install -e ".[all]"

Running tests

pip install -e ".[all]"
python -m pytest tests/ -v

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Dependencies

Package	Purpose
PySide6	Qt6 GUI framework
flask	Web UI framework
openai	OpenAI-compatible API client
markdown	Markdown rendering (GUI + Web)
pygments	Syntax highlighting (GUI + Web)
ddgs	DuckDuckGo web search
rich	CLI formatting (tables, panels, markdown)

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Also Available

Pengy (Python) is the reference implementation. Two high-performance ports are also fully certified, all sharing the same ~/.config/pengy/ data:

Edition	Language	Notes
Pengy	Python	Reference implementation — easiest to hack on
PengyR	Rust + Qt6	High-performance native binary, statically-linked core
PengyCPP	C++17 + Qt6	Highest performance, smallest memory footprint, zero external dependencies

All three offer the same 11 tools, desktop theme controls, reusable task templates, three interfaces (GUI/CLI/Web), and full chat/task interop. PengyR and PengyCPP ship pre-built AppImage, .deb, .dmg, and .zip releases for Linux, macOS, and Windows.

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License

MIT