NAME

chatgpt-el - access ChatGTP from Emacs without OpenAI API

DESCRIPTION

chatgpt-el is an Emacs Lisp program designed to interactively access ChatGPT (https://chat.openai.com/) from within Emacs. While ChatGPT can be accessed via OpenAI API using a programming language like Python and its openai module, such access has several drawbacks.

Batch processing through OpenAI API is slow; accessing OpenAI API is slow, and responses can often take an unnecessarily long time. Such slow response times can make accessing ChatGPT frustrating.
Accessing ChatGPT via OpenAI API requires a non-free OpenAI account with credit card registration. Frequent use of ChatGPT can lead to high costs and require monitoring of OpenAI billing records.

chatgpt-el solves the above issues by enabling access to ChatGPT within Emacs without the use of an OpenAI 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 ChatGPT 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/)
html-to-text moudle (https://github.com/html-to-text/node-html-to-text)

INSTALLATION

> sudo npm i -g puppeteer
> sudo npm i -g html-to-text
> git clone https://github.com/h-ohsaki/chatgpt-el.git
> cd chatgpt-el
> 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

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

USAGE

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

> chromium --remote-debugging-port=9000

Visit ChatGPT (https://chat.openai.com/) in Chromium/Chrome, and login with your OpenAI account.
On 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.
The query is automatically submitted to ChatGPT in your Chromium/Chrome. The reply from ChatGPT will be displayed in another buffer in Emacs.
Once the reply is displayed, type C-c Q or execute M-x chatgpt-insert-reply from Emacs. The reply from ChatGPT is inserted at the current point.
If there are further responses from ChatGTP, type C-u C-u C-c q to display the continuation of ChatGTP's response in the buffer of Emacs.
When requesting translation or proofreading of a text for ChatGPT, it is possible to replace the query text with the response from ChatGTP. To do this, type C-u C-u C-c Q.

TROUBLE SHOOTING

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"
}

Send a query from the command line using chatgpt script.

> echo hello | ./chatgpt -s

You should see that "hello" is sent to ChatGPT in your Chromium/Chrome browser.

Receive a reply from the command line using chatgpt script.

> ./chatgpt -r
Hello! How can I assist you today?

EOF

This will show the reply from ChatGPT, 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.