First Chat¶

Start your first conversation with an LLM using Perspt.

Prerequisites¶

Perspt installed (see Installation)
An API key from any provider, or Ollama running locally

Step 1: Set Your API Key¶

export GEMINI_API_KEY="your-key"

Step 2: Launch the TUI¶

perspt

Perspt auto-detects the provider from the environment variable and launches the chat TUI. You will see a status bar showing the provider and model.

Step 3: Chat¶

Type a message and press Enter. Perspt streams the response in real time with markdown formatting (code blocks, headers, lists, bold, italic).

You: Explain Rust's ownership model in 3 sentences.

Assistant: Rust's ownership model ensures each value has exactly one owner at a
time. When the owner goes out of scope, the value is automatically dropped.
Borrowing rules allow temporary references without transferring ownership, and
the compiler enforces these rules at compile time to prevent data races and
dangling pointers.

Step 4: Navigate¶

Key	Action
Enter	Send message
Ctrl+J	Insert newline in input
Page Up / Down	Scroll chat history
Ctrl+Up / Down	Scroll one line
Esc or Ctrl+Q	Exit
/save	Save conversation to file

Step 5: Try Simple CLI Mode¶

For a minimal interface without the TUI:

perspt simple-chat
# Or with logging:
perspt simple-chat --log-file session.txt

Type your question, get a streamed text answer. Type exit or Ctrl+D to quit.

Next Steps¶

Agent Mode Tutorial — Try autonomous multi-file coding
Local Models with Ollama — Use Ollama for offline conversations