oi: Chat with Ollama Models right from your Terminal — with Automatic Model Discovery, Markdown Support, Piping, and Conversation History.

This project is a forked version of the original library Mods, rebuilt to work exclusively with Ollama. Mods is an excellent library from Charm — their markdown rendering in the terminal is fantastic! However, Charm is now more into their new Crush. I still prefer Mods for its simplicity, but I need some features that aren't currently available with Mods, which is why this library was built on top of it.

Installation

Binaries are available for Linux and Windows in the releases.

Or just install with go:

go install github.com/GuntuAshok/oi@latest

What's different?

Here are the changes from the original:

• Ollama Only: This project only supports Ollama. All other APIs and their related code have been trimmed.
• Model Autodiscovery: Automatically discovers your local Ollama models. You can pick a model immediately, set it as the default without changing any configuration, and the model list updates automatically whenever you pull a new model.
• Chat Support: Added a simple, non-TUI chat option so you can continue a conversation directly in REPL style from the terminal using the newly introduced --chat option. Just type oi --chat and you're good to go.
• Conversation Management: Combination use of --list along with --show, --continue and --delete is introduced. Now instead of using --list for copying conversation ID then using it with --show, --continue or --delete, you can simply use combo flags like -ls, -lc and -ld (-ld supports selecting multiple conversations to be deleted).
• Performance Fix: Ollama's chat API follows a template with system, user, and assistant roles. Conversations must be sent in that format to properly use the context (KV cache) from earlier messages. If the history isn't formatted this way, Ollama must rebuild the KV cache every time you send a new message — which is probably why mods slowed down when continuing a chat. This project ensures the history is formatted correctly, eliminating the performance drop during continued conversations.
• Dependencies: No new dependencies were added to the original mods library. A few dependencies related to unused APIs have been removed.
• New Binary Name: oi — The binary is now named oi. No particular reason — those two letters are adjacent on the keyboard and easy to type. You can just think of Ollama Input (oi) to remember.

Usage

You can see the original mods README for all features and how to use the library. Some of it may not be relevant to this project. I will update this README with everything it supports in due course.

Note: Just remember to use oi in commands instead of mods.

Disclaimer

This repository provides small, quality-of-life improvements to the original Mods library for my personal use of Ollama. I’m not a regular Go developer outside this library, so I’ll keep changes minimal and stable, but it’s not a fully supported production tool. I still need to test it.

Contributions

Bug fixes and small, well-documented improvements are always welcome!

License

This project is based on Charmbracelet Mods, licensed under the MIT License (see LICENSE-MODS).

Modifications © 2025 Ashok Guntu

These modifications are also licensed under the MIT License.