// the take
A self-hosted ChatGPT web UI built with a Flask backend and vanilla JS/HTML frontend, aimed at people who want a lightweight alternative to the official ChatGPT site and are willing to supply their own OpenAI API key.
The stack is deliberately minimal — no React, no build step, just Flask serving static JS — so the whole codebase is readable in one sitting and easy to fork for a quick personal project. It supports a custom OPENAI_API_BASE, so you can point it at Azure OpenAI or a reverse proxy without touching code. Docker Compose is included for a one-command self-host. Nearly 3,500 stars shows it solved a real problem for a lot of people when it was active.
The README states outright that development is halted due to the maintainer's lack of time, and the last push was mid-2024 — over two years stale against a fast-moving OpenAI API surface, so expect breakage with current models/endpoints. The TODO list shows core features like conversation export/import, file upload, and speech I/O were never shipped. There's no auth or multi-user support mentioned, and the API key lives in a plain config.json or env var with no guidance on securing a public-facing deployment. Documentation beyond basic setup is thin, which matches the author's own admission that docs need work.
We read the README, the directory tree and a key source file in October 2026. Nobody pays to be listed. How we judge →