Interfaces#

OpenProgram can be used three ways: the Web UI in a browser, the TUI in a terminal, and one-shot invocations on the command line. This page explains how the three relate and helps you pick an entry point.

Three clients, one service#

All three interfaces share the same local background service (called the worker in the code): a resident process hosting the FastAPI + WebSocket backend and the web UI itself, all on a single port (18100 by default), plus optional chat-channel adapters. The Web UI and the terminal TUI both connect to it over WebSocket; if no worker is running, the TUI starts one automatically.

Sessions all live in ~/.openprogram/sessions/ (each session is a git repository), and all three interfaces read and write the same store. As a result:

• A chat started in the terminal shows up in the Web UI sidebar; click it to continue.
• A Web session can be resumed in the terminal via /resume inside the TUI, or continued non-interactively with openprogram --resume <session-id> --print "...". (The --resume flag does not yet select the session when launching the interactive TUI — use /resume there.)
• Conversations from openprogram --print "..." one-shots are also written to the session store and can be revisited later in any interface.

Worker management commands: openprogram status / stop / restart; openprogram worker install registers it as a login-launch service. See openprogram -h for details.

The three interfaces#

Isolated workspaces#

--profile <name> (or the OPENPROGRAM_PROFILE environment variable) switches the entire state directory from ~/.openprogram/ to ~/.openprogram-<name>/ — config, sessions, logs, and credentials are all isolated, and each profile has its own worker. Use it to run multiple independent environments in parallel.