Chat

A streaming playground against whichever model the API is serving, with local tools, retrieval over your files, and live HTML rendering.

Tools

Three built-in tools the model can call locally:

• web_search: DuckDuckGo search plus a url mode to fetch a page as compact markdown. No API key.
• python: runs Python in a three-tier sandbox (apple/container if installed, else macOS sandbox-exec, else subprocess with rlimit). AST checks block os.system, signal tampering, and direct network calls. Matplotlib charts the model saves render inline.
• terminal: a bash one-liner in the same sandbox. Dangerous commands (sudo, curl, rm) are rejected at command position with token-aware parsing.

Local models often emit malformed tool calls. The Lab heals six common shapes (Hermes <tool_call> tags, fenced JSON, bare objects, trailing commas, fancy quotes, function-call style) before dispatching, flagged with a healed chip.

Self-healing tool calls

The tool loop is server-side, capped at 25 turns. Consecutive identical successful calls de-duplicate to a nudge instead of re-running the sandbox. On top of that, a per-call retry budget stops the model re-running the same failing call forever: three attempts with the same arguments, then it's told to change course (different tool, different arguments, or answer with what it has), and the tool card shows a retry limit badge. If the model still won't finish after 25 turns, the orchestrator forces one final tools-disabled re-prompt so you get a text answer, not a hard error.

Cloud & remote models

Chat runs against the model your local optiq serve is hosting by default. To use a hosted model instead, set Model source to cloud API in Model & params and fill in the endpoint. It works with any OpenAI-compatible API, such as OpenRouter.

• API base URL: the provider's endpoint, for example https://openrouter.ai/api/v1.
• API key: your own key for that provider. It is kept in this browser and sent to your local Lab, which makes the request. The server never writes it to disk.
• Model: set the Model field to the provider's id, for example z-ai/glm-5.2.

Tools, JSON mode, and chat-with-files behave the same against a cloud model as against a local one. The Lab proxies the request, so the key stays on your machine. This covers the Chat tab; quantizing and fine-tuning still work on local models. To drive a cloud model from the terminal instead, see OptiQ Code with a cloud endpoint.

JSON mode

Set JSON mode in Model & params to constrain the reply to valid JSON: any valid JSON, or match schema with a JSON Schema you paste into the box that appears. The decode is masked to only the tokens that keep the output valid (via lm-format-enforcer), so the reply always parses, no retries. Tools are off while JSON mode is on, since a single constrained response and the tool loop are mutually exclusive. The Lab's server installs the constraint automatically. See the structured output docs for the underlying response_format the Lab sends.

Chat with files (RAG with citations)

Attaching a non-image file indexes it instead of dumping the whole document into the prompt. A dependency-free BM25 retriever pulls the chunks most relevant to each question, prepends them with [n] citation markers, and the Lab renders a sources panel under the answer. Only the retrieved chunks enter the context, so a long PDF costs a few hundred tokens per turn instead of overflowing the context window.

Artifacts

An assistant message containing a fenced html block shows a Run card. Clicking it opens the page in a sandboxed allow-scripts iframe in a side panel, with restart, view-source, and close. Nothing the model writes executes until you ask for it, and the running page has room to run charts, small games, and interactive widgets. The iframe has no same-origin access, so the page stays isolated.

A flight simulator written by a 122B sharded across two Macs, running in the artifact panel.

Input + history

Per-message controls for temperature, max tokens, and enable_thinking. Images attach as vision input on the multimodal quants. Multi-step tool runs collapse into a single "N tool calls" accordion. A Stop button cancels the run and SIGKILLs any sandbox subprocess. Saved chats persist to ~/.optiq/lab/chats/.