OWLEN is a Rust-powered, terminal-first interface for interacting with local large language models.
It provides a responsive chat workflow that runs against Ollama with a focus on developer productivity, vim-style navigation, and seamless session management—all without leaving your terminal.
This is free and open source software.
Features include:
- Chat Client (owlen):
- Vim-style Navigation – Normal, editing, visual, and command modes.
- Streaming Responses – Real-time token streaming from Ollama.
- Multi-Panel Interface – Separate panels for chat, thinking content, and input.
- Advanced Text Editing – Multi-line input with tui-textarea, history navigation.
- Visual Selection & Clipboard – Yank/paste text across panels.
- Flexible Scrolling – Half-page, full-page, and cursor-based navigation.
- Model Management – Interactive model and provider selection.
- Command Autocompletion – Intelligent Tab completion and suggestions in command mode.
- Session Persistence – Save and load conversations to/from disk.
- AI-Generated Descriptions – Automatic short summaries for saved sessions.
- Session Management – Start new conversations, clear history, browse saved sessions.
- Thinking Mode Support – Dedicated panel for extended reasoning content.
- Bracketed Paste – Safe paste handling for multi-line content.
- Theming System – 10 built-in themes plus custom theme support.
- Code Client (owlen-code) [Experimental]:
- All chat client features.
- Optimized system prompt for programming assistance.
- Foundation for future code-specific features.
- Core Infrastructure:
- Modular Architecture – Separated core logic, TUI components, and providers.
- Provider System – Extensible provider trait (currently: Ollama).
- Session Controller – Unified conversation and state management.
- Configuration Management – TOML-based config with sensible defaults.
- Message Formatting – Markdown rendering, thinking content extraction.
- Async Runtime – Built on Tokio for efficient streaming.
Website: somegit.dev/Owlibou/owlen
Support:
Developer: Jordan Cannon
License: MIT License
OWLEN is written in Rust. Learn Rust with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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