AiCouncil

A minimal native Rust desktop AI chat client for OpenRouter, built with iced. English UI, local SQLite persistence, no telemetry.

Features

• Automatic OpenRouter model catalog with a unified model picker: single pick, or same-question multi-model parallel answers from one entry. Family-grouped list with search; a star marks the primary model.
• Multi-branch follow-ups: branch from any completed answer, each branch keeps its own history; "continue from here" switches the main branch.
• Markdown + LaTeX rendering with in-message selection and copy; formulas copy as source with their original delimiters; body font size adjustable 12–22px.
• Text attachments (single file ≤256KB, ≤10 files / ≤1MB total) with automatic conversion of long pastes (≥2500 characters) into attachments.
• Anthropic-model egress gate: mainland China / Hong Kong / unknown network egress is blocked with an explicit dialog before any Anthropic model is called; non-Anthropic models are unaffected.
• Failure recovery: failed rounds don't lock the conversation; eligibility- gated retry with cooldowns; attempts aggregate per card.
• Composer drafts persist per chat and survive closing the app: non-blank input is restored exactly (whitespace and line breaks included), every chat keeps its own text and attachments, and "New chat" returns to the same unsent slot instead of creating empty shells.
• Automatic chat titles via DeepSeek (optional); manual renames always win.
• Soft Sage reading theme, draggable right pane, Markdown export, exact cost labels.

Details: implementation status · rendering notes · acceptance matrix.

Run (Windows 10/11)

Requires Rust (toolchain pinned by rust-toolchain.toml).

cargo run --release

The data directory is created automatically next to the exe on first launch:

• data\aicouncil.db — chats, message tree, generation records, cost ledger (SQLite/WAL; old databases migrate automatically; a missing local database is migrated one-way from legacy %APPDATA%\AiCouncil)
• data\config.json — non-sensitive settings
• data\credentials.dpapi — API keys, DPAPI-encrypted for the current Windows user; never written to plain config, the database, or exports

Offline development and checks

# local mock (catalog + SSE streaming + costs), no real spend
cargo run --example mock_openrouter -- 8901
# another terminal
AICOUNCIL_BASE_URL=http://127.0.0.1:8901/v1 cargo run

# rendering acceptance window (formulas / CJK-mixed / stress samples)
cargo run --example render_probe

# automated E2E against the mock (=multi adds parallel, =multi2 adds
# multi-branch follow-ups)
AICOUNCIL_E2E=multi cargo run

# routine checks
cargo fmt --all -- --check
cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings
cargo test

(On memory-constrained machines, add -j 2 to cargo commands.)

Known limitations

• tiny-skia software rendering (wgpu produces no frames in remote-desktop sessions; on GPU machines the wgpu feature can be re-enabled in Cargo.toml)
• in-message selection only; continuous drag-select across messages is not implemented
• macOS / Linux unverified; real OpenRouter / DeepSeek integration not yet executed — everything is verified against the local mock

See docs/ACCEPTANCE.md for the full verified / not-run matrix.

License

MIT — see LICENSE. Icons are from Lucide (see assets/icons/LUCIDE_LICENSE.md).