Basic Usage

Perspt offers two interactive modes: the TUI (rich terminal UI) and simple-chat (plain-text streaming).

Launching the TUI

# Auto-detect provider from env keys
perspt

# Explicit provider + model
perspt chat --provider-type anthropic --model claude-sonnet-4-20250514

# Override API key
perspt chat --api-key sk-xxx --model gpt-4.1

The TUI provides:

• Markdown rendering (code blocks, headers, lists, bold, italic)

• Real-time response streaming

• Scroll navigation

• Status bar (provider, model, streaming indicator)

Keyboard Shortcuts

Key	Action
Enter	Send message
Ctrl+J	Insert newline in input
Page Up / Down	Scroll chat history
Ctrl+Up / Down	Scroll by one line
Home / End	Jump to top / bottom
Esc or Ctrl+Q	Quit
Ctrl+C	Cancel current stream

Chat Commands

Command	Description
/save	Save conversation to a timestamped text file
exit or quit	Exit the application

Simple CLI Mode

For a minimal text interface suitable for piping and logging:

perspt simple-chat
perspt simple-chat --log-file session.txt

Type your message, press Enter. Responses stream to stdout. Type exit or press Ctrl+D to quit.

Provider Auto-Detection

Perspt checks environment variables in this priority order:

Env Variable	Provider	Default Model
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	Anthropic	claude-sonnet-4-20250514
OPENAI_API_KEY	OpenAI	gpt-4.1
GEMINI_API_KEY	Gemini	gemini-3.1-flash-lite-preview
GROQ_API_KEY	Groq	llama-3.3-70b-versatile
COHERE_API_KEY	Cohere	command-r-plus
XAI_API_KEY	xAI	grok-3-mini-fast
DEEPSEEK_API_KEY	DeepSeek	deepseek-chat
(none)	Ollama (local)	llama3.2

See Providers for full provider details.