chatgpt-api - Node.js client for the unofficial ChatGPT API. 🔥

Created at: 2022-12-03 08:05:09
Language: TypeScript
License: MIT

Update February 1, 2023

This package no longer requires any browser hacks – it is now using the official OpenAI completions API with a leaked model that ChatGPT uses under the hood. 🔥

import { ChatGPTAPI } from 'chatgpt'

const api = new ChatGPTAPI({
  apiKey: process.env.OPENAI_API_KEY
})

const res = await api.sendMessage('Hello World!')
console.log(res.text)

Please upgrade to chatgpt@latest (at least v4.0.0). The updated version is significantly more lightweight and robust compared with previous versions. You also don't have to worry about IP issues or rate limiting.

Huge shoutout to @waylaidwanderer for discovering the leaked chat model!

If you run into any issues, we do have a pretty active Discord with a bunch of ChatGPT hackers from the Node.js & Python communities.

Lastly, please consider starring this repo and following me on twitter twitter to help support the project.

Thanks && cheers, Travis


Example usage

ChatGPT API

Node.js client for the unofficial ChatGPT API.

NPM Build Status MIT License Prettier Code Formatting

Intro

This package is a Node.js wrapper around ChatGPT by OpenAI. TS batteries included.

You can use it to start building projects powered by ChatGPT like chatbots, websites, etc...

Install

npm install chatgpt

Make sure you're using node >= 18 so fetch is available (or node >= 14 if you install a fetch polyfill).

Usage

Sign up for an OpenAI API key and store it in your environment.

import { ChatGPTAPI } from 'chatgpt'

async function example() {
  const api = new ChatGPTAPI({
    apiKey: process.env.OPENAI_API_KEY
  })

  const res = await api.sendMessage('Hello World!')
  console.log(res.text)
}

If you want to track the conversation, you'll need to pass the parentMessageid and conversationid:

const api = new ChatGPTAPI({ apiKey: process.env.OPENAI_API_KEY })

// send a message and wait for the response
let res = await api.sendMessage('What is OpenAI?')
console.log(res.text)

// send a follow-up
res = await api.sendMessage('Can you expand on that?', {
  conversationId: res.conversationId,
  parentMessageId: res.id
})
console.log(res.text)

// send another follow-up
res = await api.sendMessage('What were we talking about?', {
  conversationId: res.conversationId,
  parentMessageId: res.id
})
console.log(res.text)

You can add streaming via the onProgress handler:

// timeout after 2 minutes (which will also abort the underlying HTTP request)
const res = await api.sendMessage('Write a 500 word essay on frogs.', {
  // print the partial response as the AI is "typing"
  onProgress: (partialResponse) => console.log(partialResponse.text)
})

// print the full text at the end
console.log(res.text)

You can add a timeout using the timeoutMs option:

// timeout after 2 minutes (which will also abort the underlying HTTP request)
const response = await api.sendMessage(
  'write me a really really long essay on frogs',
  {
    timeoutMs: 2 * 60 * 1000
  }
)

If you want to see more info about what's actually being sent to OpenAI's completions API, set the debug: true option in the ChatGPTAPI constructor:

const api = new ChatGPTAPI({
  apiKey: process.env.OPENAI_API_KEY,
  debug: true
})

You'll notice that we're using a reverse-engineered promptPrefix and promptSuffix. You can customize these via the sendMessage options:

const res = await api.sendMessage('what is the answer to the universe?', {
  promptPrefix: `You are ChatGPT, a large language model trained by OpenAI. You answer as concisely as possible for each response (e.g. don’t be verbose). It is very important that you answer as concisely as possible, so please remember this. If you are generating a list, do not have too many items. Keep the number of items short.
Current date: ${new Date().toISOString()}\n\n`
})

Note that we automatically handle appending the previous messages to the prompt and attempt to optimize for the available tokens (which defaults to 4096).

Usage in CommonJS (Dynamic import)
async function example() {
  // To use ESM in CommonJS, you can use a dynamic import
  const { ChatGPTAPI } = await import('chatgpt')

  const api = new ChatGPTAPI({ apiKey: process.env.OPENAI_API_KEY })

  const res = await api.sendMessage('Hello World!')
  console.log(res.text)
}

Docs

See the auto-generated docs for more info on methods and parameters.

Demos

To run the included demos:

  1. clone repo
  2. install node deps
  3. set OPENAI_API_KEY in .env

A basic demo is included for testing purposes:

npx tsx demos/demo.ts

A demo showing on progress handler:

npx tsx demos/demo-on-progress.ts

The on progress demo uses the optional onProgress parameter to sendMessage to receive intermediary results as ChatGPT is "typing".

A conversation demo:

npx tsx demos/demo-conversation.ts

A persistence demo shows how to store messages in Redis for persistence:

npx tsx demos/demo-conversation.ts

Any keyv adaptor is supported for persistence, and there are overrides if you'd like to use a different way of storing / retrieving messages.

Note that persisting message is required for remembering the context of previous conversations beyond the scope of the current Node.js process, since by default, we only store messages in memory.

Projects

All of these awesome projects are built using the chatgpt package. 🤯

If you create a cool integration, feel free to open a PR and add it to the list.

Compatibility

  • This package is ESM-only.
  • This package supports node >= 14.
  • This module assumes that fetch is installed.
    • In node >= 18, it's installed by default.
    • In node < 18, you need to install a polyfill like unfetch/polyfill (guide)
  • If you want to build a website using chatgpt, we recommend using it only from your backend API

Credits

License

MIT © Travis Fischer

If you found this project interesting, please consider sponsoring me or following me on twitter twitter