Interfaces

OpenProgram has four user interfaces: the macOS Desktop App, the Web UI in an external browser, the terminal TUI, and one-shot command-line invocations. This page explains how they relate and helps you pick an entry point.

Four clients, one service

All four 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. Desktop embeds the same Web UI and adds native panes for the built-in Browser and Terminal. The Web UI and terminal TUI connect to the worker directly; if no worker is running, Desktop or the TUI starts one automatically.

Sessions all live in ~/.openprogram/sessions/ (each session is a git repository), and all four 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 four interfaces

Interface	How to enter	Best for
macOS Desktop	Open /Applications/OpenProgram.app	Multi-pane chat, Files, built-in Browser, Terminal, and Agent control of visible internal webpages
Web UI	openprogram web, open http://localhost:18100 in a browser	Daily main interface: chat, DAG branch view, function / skill / MCP / memory management, settings
Terminal TUI	openprogram tui (bare openprogram first asks terminal vs web)	Full chat without leaving the terminal: slash commands, permission-profile switching, scrollable history
CLI one-shot	openprogram --print "..."	Scripting, being called from other programs, quick one-off questions

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.