TUI

gptme ships an optional Textual-based terminal UI, gptme-tui, complementary to the plain CLI (which remains better suited for non-interactive and scripted use).

It addresses two long-standing UX limitations of the plain CLI (see issue #569):

• Prompt queueing: type and submit new prompts while the agent is working. They are shown dimmed in the conversation and dispatched automatically when the current turn finishes.

• Compact, expandable output: tool output is collapsed to a one-line summary by default (like HTML <details>); click it or press Ctrl+O to expand.

It also provides a persistent status bar showing the current model, token usage relative to the context window, and agent state.

Installation

The TUI requires the tui extra:

pipx install 'gptme[tui]'

Usage

Start a new conversation in the current directory:

gptme-tui

Resume the most recent conversation:

gptme-tui --resume

Conversations are stored in the same format and location as CLI conversations, so they can be opened interchangeably: start in the TUI, resume in the CLI (gptme --resume), or vice versa (gptme-tui -n <name>).

Inline mode (experimental)

By default the TUI runs in the alternate screen with its own scrollable chat view. With --inline it instead renders like Claude Code: messages are printed into the terminal’s native scrollback while only a small live region (streaming preview, input, status bar) stays at the bottom:

gptme-tui --inline

Terminal/tmux scrolling then works normally, and the transcript stays in your scrollback after exit. Trade-offs: past tool output can’t be expanded in place (Ctrl+O instead toggles whether future tool output prints expanded), and mouse interaction is left entirely to the terminal.

Keys

Key	Action
Enter	Send prompt (queues it if the agent is busy)
Alt+Enter	Insert newline (Ctrl+J also works)
Tab	Complete slash-commands and their arguments
Escape	Interrupt generation
Ctrl+C	Interrupt generation, or quit when idle
Ctrl+D	Quit
Ctrl+O	Expand/collapse all tool outputs

When a tool is about to execute, a confirmation dialog shows a preview; press y to execute, n to skip, or a to auto-confirm for the rest of the session.

Commands

The TUI supports the same slash-commands as the CLI (/model, /undo, /tokens, …), with the same Tab completion, by routing them through the shared command registry. Command output is shown inline in the conversation. /quit is a TUI-local alias for /exit.

Limitations

The TUI is young and intentionally minimal. Commands that need an external terminal program (e.g. /edit spawning $EDITOR) don’t work yet; resume the conversation in the CLI for those. Non-interactive/scripted use should keep using gptme directly.