[FEATURE_REQUEST] Support for regular AI chat mode for general questions like ChatGPT TUI

There are a lot of TUI tools for AI chats but none of them are actively maintained and have nice TUI user experience with keyboard shortcuts.

Would be great to have open code to support regular chats with AI models/tools, not just like a coding agent.
Open code is really one TUI I found that has keyboard shortcut to navigate to next/previous message in a thread - one of the features that only open code has(I checked most of UI interfaces like chatgpt, Claude, deepseek, grok) and also terminal tuis like aichat and mods since only these two are kinda maintained tuis)

Maybe we can have one more built-in mode called ask where users can chat about any topics like in chatgpt app but in terminal?
Or should we add custom mode for it? If so - would you recommend it to use opencode for general usage instead of tools like ChatGPT/Claude?

Btw, thanks Dax for all the work you do, really appreciate it man, I did not use yet nor SST nor opencode but looking at it really liked the idea and it seems polished product🔥 and wanna try it as alternative to ChatGPT.

I think there is quite a bunch of users who would like to use terminal TUI for AI chat tools.

i would really like a chat mode as well! i currently use plan mode to ask general questions but a dedicated chat only mode would be nice!

Considering this is an agentic tool, I dont really think a chat mode should be added by default. They gave us the ability to create custom modes and this would be a great usecase for that it seems.

the plan mode is similar to a chat mode

I think it's best to keep things simple. If we cater to every low-frequency demand, the software will quickly become a bloated monster.

I use the "ask" mode and it is great. It easy to set up in the config, so I don't think it should be a default as the main use for the opencode is to build apps.

Considering this is an agentic tool, I dont really think a chat mode should be added by default. They gave us the ability to create custom modes and this would be a great usecase for that it seems.

I feel dumb for not realizing this was a feature, thank you for pointing it out!

i think this is achievable through plan mode or configure your own mode

Can someone provide details on how to configure a mode for this use case?

@zmunk

@zmunk you should be able to do this:

{
  "$schema": "https://opencode.ai/config.json",
  "agent": {
    "ask": {
      "mode": "primary",
      "prompt": "You have access to no tools, you can only respond to questions",
      "tools": {
        "*": false
      }
    }
  }
}

I've tried the above config, it seems there's still some system prompt telling the agent its role is to build applications, even in 'ask mode'.

fix(app): explain blocked update restart (anomalyco#1157)

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[FEATURE_REQUEST] Support for regular AI chat mode for general questions like ChatGPT TUI #1157

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[FEATURE_REQUEST] Support for regular AI chat mode for general questions like ChatGPT TUI #1157

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imakesound commented on Jul 20, 2025

shanepadgett commented on Jul 20, 2025

hawkaii commented on Jul 20, 2025

hujianxin commented on Jul 20, 2025

mpazik commented on Jul 20, 2025

imakesound commented on Jul 20, 2025

thdxr commented on Jul 20, 2025

zmunk commented on Oct 19, 2025

rekram1-node commented on Oct 19, 2025

mrchantey commented on Nov 20, 2025

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