NAME

chatgpt-el - interactively access ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude/DeepSeek from Emacs without APIs

DESCRIPTION

chatgpt-el is an Emacs Lisp program designed to interactively access ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude/DeepSeek from within Emacs. While those AIs can be accessed via API interfaces using a programming language like Python and several modules, such access has several drawbacks.

1. Batch processing through APIs is slow; accessing APIs is slow, and responses can often take an unnecessarily long time. Such slow response times can make accessing AIs frustrating.

2. Accessing AIs via APIs sometimes requires a non-free AI account with credit card registration. Frequent use of AIs can lead to high costs and require monitoring of AI billing records.

chatgpt-el solves the above issues by enabling access to AIs within Emacs without the use of an API key. The program is implemented using Chromium/Chrome browser's CDP (Chrome DevTools Protocol) (https://chromedevtools.github.io/devtools-protocol/), and therefore requires a CDP-enabled Chromium/Chrome browser to be running. chatgpt-el operates by remotely controlling your instance of Chromium/Chrome using the Node.js script called chatgpt, which is built on the Puppeteer library (https://pptr.dev/). Therefore, your Chromium/Chrome browser must accept a CDP connection from the chatgpt script.

Note that the implementation of the chatgpt script depends on the internal structure of the HTML file returned by the AI server. If chatgpt does not work in your environment, you may need to modify the program according to your environment.

PREREQUISITES

• Chromium or Chrome browser (or other browsers supporting the CDP protocol).
• Node.js (https://nodejs.org/en).
• Puppeteer module (https://pptr.dev/)

INSTALLATION

> git clone https://github.com/h-ohsaki/chatgpt-el.git
> cd chatgpt-el
> npm i puppeteer-core
> sudo install -m 644 chatgpt.el /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp
> cat <<EOF >>~/.emacs
;; chatgpt-el
(autoload 'chatgpt-query "chatgpt" nil t)
(autoload 'chatgpt-insert-reply "chatgpt" nil t)
(global-set-key "\C-cq" 'chatgpt-query)
(global-set-key "\C-cQ" 'chatgpt-insert-reply)
(setq chatgpt-prog "../path/to/chatgpt-el/chatgpt")
EOF
> mkdir -p ~/var/log/chatgpt

You can place chatgpt script anywhere in your system, but Node.js modules such as Puppeteer must be accessible from chatgpt program.

USAGE

1. Start Chromium/Chrome browser with remote debugging on port 9000.

> chromium --remote-debugging-port=9000

2. Visit ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude/DeepSeek in Chromium/Chrome, and login with your account.

3. In Emacs, move the point (i.e., the cursor in Emacs) at the end of the query text. Alternatively, you can select the region containing the query text. Then, type C-c q or execute M-x chatgpt-query. With a prefix argument (e.g., C-u C-c q), you will be prompted what query prefix is prepended to the query text.

4. The query is automatically submitted to the AI in your Chromium/Chrome. The reply from the AI will be displayed in another buffer in Emacs.

5. Once the reply is displayed, type C-c Q or execute M-x chatgpt-insert-reply from Emacs. The reply from the AI is inserted at the current point.

6. If there are further responses from the AI, type C-u C-u C-c q to display the continuation of AI's response in the buffer of Emacs.

7. When requesting translation or proofreading of a text for the AI, it is possible to replace the query text with the response from ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude. To do this, type C-u C-u C-c Q.

TROUBLE SHOOTING

1. Make sure your Chromium/Chrome accepts a CDP connection on localhost:9000.

> telnet localhost 9000
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET /json/version HTTP/1.1

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Security-Policy:frame-ancestors 'none'
Content-Length:391
Content-Type:application/json; charset=UTF-8

{
   "Browser": "Chrome/112.0.5615.121",
   "Protocol-Version": "1.3",
   "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/112.0.0.0 Safari/537.36",
   "V8-Version": "11.2.214.14",
   "WebKit-Version": "537.36 (@39cc...2268)",
   "webSocketDebuggerUrl": "ws:///devtools/browser/e32f...ca87"
}

2. Make sure your Chrome/Chromium visits ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude/DeepSeek page by running chatgpt -i.

> ./chatgpt -i
> ./chatgpt -e gemini -i
> ./chatgpt -e claude -i
> ./chatgpt -e deepseek -i

3. Send a query (e.g., hello) to the AI.

> ./chatgpt -s hello
> ./chatgpt -r
<div class="flex w-full flex-col gap-1 empty:hidden first:pt-[3px]"><div class="markdown prose dark:prose-invert w-full break-words dark"><p data-start="0" data-end="37" data-is-last-node="" data-is-only-node="">Hello! 😊<br data-start="9" data-end="12">
How can I help you today?</p></div></div>
> ./chatgpt -e gemini -s hello
> ./chatgpt -e gemini -r
<div _ngcontent-ng-c3682768483="" class="markdown markdown-main-panel stronger enable-updated-hr-color" id="model-response-message-contentr_d1f3fd77a101a596" dir="ltr" style="--animation-duration: 600ms; --fade-animation-function: linear;"><p data-sourcepos="1:1-1:32">Hello! How can I help you today?</p></div>

This will show the reply from the AI, which must be equivalent to that shown in your Chromium/Chrome.

FOR QUTEBROWSER USERS

If you are a qutebrowser user instead of Chromium/Chrome, you can use qutechat (https://github.com/h-ohsaki/qutechat), an extension to chatgpt-el supporting qutebrowser.