mdllama

A CLI tool that lets you chat with Ollama and OpenAI models right from your terminal, with built-in Markdown rendering and websearch functionalities.

Features

• Chat with Ollama models from the terminal
• Built-in Markdown rendering
• Web-search functionality
• Extremely simple installation and removal (see below)

Screenshots

Chat Interface

Help

Interactive Commands

When using mdllama run for interactive chat, you have access to special commands:

See man(1) mdllama for details.

man 1 mdllama

OpenAI and Provider Support

Supported Providers

• Ollama: Local models running on your machine
• OpenAI: Official OpenAI API (GPT-3.5, GPT-4, etc.)
• OpenAI-compatible: Any API that follows OpenAI's format (I like Groq, so use it! https://groq.com)

Setup Instructions

For Ollama (Default)

mdllama setup
# Or specify explicitly
mdllama setup --provider ollama

For OpenAI

mdllama setup --provider openai
# Will prompt for your OpenAI API key

For OpenAI-Compatible APIs

mdllama setup --provider openai --openai-api-base https://ai.hackclub.com
# Then provide your API key when prompted

Usage Examples

# Use with OpenAI
mdllama chat --provider openai "Explain quantum computing"

# Use with specific model and provider
mdllama run --provider openai --model gpt-4

# Interactive session with streaming
mdllama run --provider openai --stream=true --render-markdown

Live Demo

Configure the demo endpoint used by mdllama by running the setup flow and entering the API credentials below when prompted.

mdllama setup -p openai --openai-api-base https://ai.qincai.xyz

When prompted, provide the following values:

• API key: sk-proxy-7b8c9d0e1f2a3b4c5d6e7f8a9b0c1d2e

After setup you can run the CLI as usual, for example:

mdllama run -p openai

Note

Try asking the model to give you some markdown-formatted text, or test the web search features:

• Give me a markdown-formatted text about the history of AI.
• search:Python 3.13 (web search)
• site:python.org (fetch website content)
• websearch:What are the latest Python features? (AI-powered search)

So, try it out and see how it works!

Installation

Install using package manager (recommended, supported method)

Debian/Ubuntu Installation

1. Add the PPA to your sources list:

   echo 'deb [trusted=yes] https://packages.qincai.xyz/debian stable main' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/qincai-ppa.list
   sudo apt update

2. Install mdllama:

   sudo apt install python3-mdllama

Fedora Installation

1. Download the latest RPM from: https://packages.qincai.xyz/fedora/

   Or, to install directly:

   sudo dnf install https://packages.qincai.xyz/fedora/mdllama-<version>.noarch.rpm

   Replace <version> with the latest version number.

2. (Optional, highly recommended) To enable as a repository for updates, create /etc/yum.repos.d/qincai-ppa.repo:

   [qincai-ppa]
   name=Raymont's Personal RPMs
   baseurl=https://packages.qincai.xyz/fedora/
   enabled=1
   metadata_expire=0
   gpgcheck=0

   Then install with:

   sudo dnf install mdllama

3, Install the ollama library from pip:

pip install ollama

You can also install it globally with:

sudo pip install ollama

Note

The ollama library is not installed by default in the RPM package since there is no system ollama package avaliable (python3-ollama). You need to install it manually using pip in order to use mdllama with Ollama models. This issue has been resolved by including a post-installation script for RPM packages that automatically installs the ollama library using pip.

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PyPI Installation (Cross-Platform)

Install via pip (recommended for Windows/macOS and Python virtual environments):

pip install mdllama

Traditional Bash Script Installation (Linux)

Warning

This method of un-/installation is deprecated and shall be avoided Please use the pip method, or use DEB/RPM packages instead

To install mdllama using the traditional bash script, run:

bash <(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/QinCai-rui/mdllama/refs/heads/main/install.sh)

To uninstall mdllama, run:

bash <(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/QinCai-rui/mdllama/refs/heads/main/uninstall.sh)

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0. See the LICENSE file for details.

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