Introduction to Lectic

Lectic is a conversational LLM client designed for users who are most comfortable working with text files and command-line tools. It treats every conversation as a simple markdown file, a design choice that unlocks a surprising number of benefits.

The Power of Plain Text

By making conversations plain text, Lectic ensures they are:

• Persistent by Default: Your conversations are saved just like any other document. There is no proprietary database or cloud service.
• Version Controllable: You can use git and other version control systems to track the history of a conversation, branch off new ideas, and merge different lines of thought.
• Searchable and Portable: Standard tools like grep, sed, and awk can be used to search, analyze, and modify your conversations. They are easy to back up, sync, and move between machines.
• Private: Your conversations can stay entirely on your local machine if you are using a local LLM provider like Ollama.

Who is Lectic For?

Lectic is built to support deep, thoughtful work. It is for anyone who wants to use LLMs as a tool for:

• Research and Analysis: Integrate data, run analyses, and discuss the results with an LLM, all within a single, reproducible document.
• Reflection and Self-Study: Keep a running journal of your thoughts and explorations on a topic, using an LLM as a Socratic partner.
• Design and Engineering: Draft code, review diffs, and document your process in a way that can be committed directly into your project’s repository.

Lectic makes it easy to manage conversational context using content references, integrate with external tools (for search, computation, database access, and more), and include multiple LLMs in a single conversation to bring a variety of perspectives to bear on a problem.