OpenChat is a premium, beautifully designed AI coding assistant extension for Visual Studio Code. Experience a fast, dynamic, and intuitive chat interface that brings local and cloud LLMs directly into your IDE.
Features
Multi-Model Support: Seamlessly switch between local Ollama models (e.g. Llama 3) and cloud APIs (e.g. OpenAI GPT-4o, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, DeepSeek R1).
Persistent Chat Histories: Your conversations are securely saved to your local workspace, complete with editable titles and relative timestamps.
Beautiful UI: Enjoy a stunning React-based webview built with Tailwind CSS, featuring smooth transitions, code syntax highlighting, copying utilities, and an elegant conversational dashboard.
Context-Aware Assistance: Chat with your AI companion, ask it to explain active files, fix compiler errors, or suggest refactoring—all powered by quick slash commands.
Setup
Install the extension.
If using Ollama, ensure the local server is running (defaults to http://localhost:11434).
If using OpenAI or custom APIs, click "Set API Key" from the command palette (Cmd+Shift+P -> OpenChat: Set API Key) and add your secret token.
Open the OpenChat sidebar and start typing!
Requirements
VS Code 1.85.0 or later.
An active API key (for cloud models) or a local Ollama instance (for local, privacy-first inference).
OpenChat is open source and designed to streamline your daily workflow.
