feat: enhance chat interface #144

fiam · 2025-08-26T11:02:37Z

Use bubbletea to implement a readline-like interface
Support arrow keys as well as the common readline keybindings for search
Implement /copy command for copying the latest response
Maintain backward compatibility with triple-quote formatting

Signed-off-by: Alberto Garcia Hierro [email protected]

fiam · 2025-08-26T11:02:51Z

Demo

Screen.Recording.2025-08-26.at.12.03.56.mov

doringeman

Looks nice!
There was an initiative to have the same TUI as Gordon, has anything been decided on that? CC @krissetto

- Use bubbletea to implement a readline-like interface - Support arrow keys as well as the common readline keybindings for search - Implement /copy command for copying the latest response - Maintain backward compatibility with triple-quote formatting - When piping stdin into the run command, read the stdin and use it as the prompt Signed-off-by: Alberto Garcia Hierro <[email protected]>

ericcurtin · 2025-08-26T15:47:35Z

I was having a go at implementing this yesterday but this is better! "Home" and "End" keys are worth implementing/testing also to navigate to the start and end of the string.

ericcurtin · 2025-08-26T16:25:40Z

One not so great thing about clipboard, is it's dependant on xlib for linux:

$ make
Building model-cli...
go build -ldflags="-s -w" -o model-cli .
# golang.design/x/clipboard
clipboard_linux.c:14:10: fatal error: X11/Xlib.h: No such file or directory
   14 | #include <X11/Xlib.h>
      |          ^~~~~~~~~~~~
compilation terminated.
make: *** [Makefile:14: build] Error 1

xlib is kinda dead in favour of Wayland-based solutions.

ericcurtin · 2025-08-26T16:31:14Z

Up and down should probably cycle through command history, could be in a follow on PR...

In other similar tools like RamaLama and Ollama Ctrl-c stops the LLM from responding but doesn't quit the application, this is useful in case the LLM keeps talking. But Ctrl-d does quit.

ericcurtin · 2025-08-26T16:35:45Z

I wonder is the /copy functionality worth clipboard and all its dependencies (could be just a UI feature), goes above and beyond what a CLI interface normally does, one can highlight, copy and paste.

ericcurtin · 2025-08-26T18:01:29Z

commands/run.go

+
+	text := textinput.New()
+	text.Placeholder = placeholder
+	text.Prompt = ">>> "


Kinda liked the single > prior to this change, two extra characters in a terminal for real text

Makes sense, thanks! I've changed it back to a single >.

Signed-off-by: Alberto Garcia Hierro <[email protected]>

fiam · 2025-08-26T18:17:51Z

Up and down should probably cycle through command history, could be in a follow on PR...

That's already implemented in this PR.

In other similar tools like RamaLama and Ollama Ctrl-c stops the LLM from responding but doesn't quit the application, this is useful in case the LLM keeps talking. But Ctrl-d does quit.

We could do that in a followup.

ericcurtin · 2025-08-26T20:38:04Z

Up and down should probably cycle through command history, could be in a follow on PR...

That's already implemented in this PR.

I tried and with this branch and it didn't seem to work, let me try again 😊

In other similar tools like RamaLama and Ollama Ctrl-c stops the LLM from responding but doesn't quit the application, this is useful in case the LLM keeps talking. But Ctrl-d does quit.

We could do that in a followup.

ericcurtin · 2025-08-26T20:39:00Z

Home and End worked, I tried

ericcurtin · 2025-08-26T21:01:38Z

The up and down arrows work on my machine with the latest commit, but some oddities noticed:

up arrow loops around, should probably just finish when you get to the end of the history, like bash/ollama/ramalama would
when we cycle through the history, cursor stays at the start of the prompt rather than the end

ericcurtin · 2025-08-27T09:28:03Z

There's an odd bug now, type "Hello", press up twice "1Hello" appears:

$ ./model-cli run 354bf30d0aa3
Interactive chat mode started. Type '/bye' to exit.
> Hello                                                                                                                                                                          
Hello, how can I assist you today?
> 1Hello

fiam · 2025-08-27T09:36:51Z

There's an odd bug now, type "Hello", press up twice "1Hello" appears:

$ ./model-cli run 354bf30d0aa3
Interactive chat mode started. Type '/bye' to exit.
> Hello                                                                                                                                                                          
Hello, how can I assist you today?
> 1Hello

I cannot reproduce this. Could you please delete ~/.docker/model-cli/history.txt and try that with a clean history file?

ericcurtin · 2025-08-27T09:39:08Z

There's an odd bug now, type "Hello", press up twice "1Hello" appears:
$ ./model-cli run 354bf30d0aa3
Interactive chat mode started. Type '/bye' to exit.
> Hello                                                                                                                                                                          
Hello, how can I assist you today?
> 1Hello
I cannot reproduce this. Could you please delete ~/.docker/model-cli/history.txt and try that with a clean history file?

That worked, maybe 1Hello was in my history... The other difference I see between this and bash/ollama/etc. is when you cycle back down again, normally the last down entry in blank. Here it's not.

xenoscopic

I like this functionality overall, but I'd like to discuss it with @mia-docker first since this is a very UI/UX-heavy change. I'd also like to discuss how we plan to implement chat history in Docker Desktop with @qodesmith (who will be back next week) to make sure that we're aligned on storing those that data. @fiam are you okay with one of us following up on this PR next week once we discuss further? I think others on the team could contribute to it as well in case you're time-constrained at that point.

xenoscopic · 2025-08-28T21:39:14Z

commands/run.go

 	"github.com/docker/model-cli/desktop"
+	"github.com/docker/model-cli/pkg/history"
 	"github.com/spf13/cobra"
+	"golang.design/x/clipboard"


Instead of using golang.design/x/clipboard that relies on cgo, can we just use the github.com/atotto/clipboard dependency that we've already brought in via bubbletea? The API looks like it would provide the same functionality we need, and it already operates via shelling our rather than using cgo.

xenoscopic · 2025-08-28T21:42:56Z

pkg/history/history.go

+// New creates a new History instance and loads all previous history, if it exists.
+func New(cli *command.DockerCli) (*History, error) {
+	dirname := filepath.Dir(cli.ConfigFile().Filename)
+	p := filepath.Join(dirname, "model-cli", "history.txt")


Perhaps we should discuss where we want to store this, because we also have chat history as a near-term roadmap item for the GUI, and I think it would be nice if we could share chat output between them. I get that this is more of a readline()-style history, but I think we should discuss with @mia-docker and @qodesmith about how we want the two to interact.

fiam · 2025-08-29T08:31:35Z

Convering to draft while we discuss this approach, to prevent an accidental merge.

fiam requested review from doringeman and xenoscopic August 26, 2025 11:05

doringeman reviewed Aug 26, 2025

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fiam force-pushed the chat-eye-candy branch from 6487f12 to f41b2ec Compare August 26, 2025 13:24

p1-0tr approved these changes Aug 26, 2025

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ericcurtin approved these changes Aug 26, 2025

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ericcurtin reviewed Aug 26, 2025

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fiam changed the title ~~feat: enhance chat interface with comprehensive UI improvements~~ feat: enhance chat interface Aug 26, 2025

ui: use a single > for the prompt

239eafe

Signed-off-by: Alberto Garcia Hierro <[email protected]>

fix: make ctrl-c clear the prompt without quitting

01c3c68

fiam marked this pull request as draft August 26, 2025 19:53

fix: tests

5f72781

fiam marked this pull request as ready for review August 26, 2025 20:32

ericcurtin approved these changes Aug 26, 2025

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fiam added 3 commits August 27, 2025 08:56

fix: keep previous ctrl-c behavior

26567c9

fix: avoid printing an extra ...

13906b0

fix: simplify history handling, align it with typical shell behavior

1c7b3fa

fiam mentioned this pull request Aug 28, 2025

feat: allow stopping the LLM with ctrl-c without exiting #147

Draft

xenoscopic reviewed Aug 28, 2025

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fiam marked this pull request as draft August 29, 2025 08:31

p1-0tr mentioned this pull request Oct 15, 2025

New run prompt docker/model-runner#230

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