Great idea! I've been humorously referring to chat agents as next gen Clippy because of their chipper, talky default personas which I find insufferably annoying.<p>I'm kind of shocked Microsoft didn't already do this as an alt version of their CoPilot UI. Really a huge miss on their part because I hate the overbearingly intrusive way they keep forcing it into their OS, apps and my fucking laptop keyboard. If they at least acknowledged their behavior and owned it (with a sly wink), I'd hate it a little less. I might even be up for a "Clippy is my CoPilot" sticker on my laptop (calling back to the old 80s "Jesus is my Copilot" bumper stickers).
One underused Clippy feature is the fact that Clippy and all the other Agents (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Agent" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Agent</a>), like the dog that did search in Windows XP, came with an API developers could use to write their own assistants.<p>Thanks to the horrific beauty of ActiveX, this even allowed these Agents to be loaded into web pages.<p>The API was supported up till Windows 7 (though it was an optional component at the time) but still I would love for someone to dig up an old copy of the agent SDK (I couldn't find it myself) and hook up ChatGPT to the real, actual Clippy.
This is a clear case of "Build Something People Want".<p>After all it was requested almost daily over at x.com<p><a href="https://x.com/search?q=ai%20bring%20clippy%20back&src=typed_query&f=live" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/search?q=ai%20bring%20clippy%20back&src=typed_...</a>
Fun fact: clippy came from Microsoft Bob, which Melinda Gates was the marketing manager for.<p>I have often wondered what role their relationship played in keeping Clippy around. And now I wonder if Clippy makes Bill Gates sad since the divorce.
Can you add narration in Gilbert Gottfried's voice?<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu_Pzuwy-JY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu_Pzuwy-JY</a>
IIRC correctly, Clippy’s most famous feature was interrupting you to offer advice. The advice was usually basic/useless/annoying, hence Clippy’s reputation, but a powerful LLM could actually make the original concept work. It would not be simply a chatbot that responds to text, but rather would observe your screen, understand it through a vision model, and give appropriate advice. Things like “did you know there’s an easier way to do what you’re doing”. I don’t think the necessary trust exists yet to do this using public LLM APIs, nor does the hardware to do it locally, but crack either of those and I could see ClipGPT being genuinely useful.
Great job! Having ollama support would be useful as well[1]!
[1]<a href="https://github.com/ollama/ollama">https://github.com/ollama/ollama</a>
I really love the style.<p>I wish this sort of style had a more specific name and could be decoupled from the desktop a bit more.<p>Would love to see a native webpage inspired by windows 2000 or similar. I've struggled to find a name for it.
Amazing, we also have CowPilot now <a href="https://github.com/agentsea/cowpilot">https://github.com/agentsea/cowpilot</a>
Wow. The ease-of-use is insanely good. I haven't figured out yet how to move clippy to a different location on the screen (rather than centred), but it works well. I have multiple models downloaded and am chatting already!
It looks like you're talking about a cartoon assistant character. Would you like help?<p>ICYDN: The proper name of Clippy is actually "Clippit", as introduced in Office 97.
Finally a useful UI for llama.cpp!<p>Thank you Felix! This is extremely cool! Can you please make a short blog post explaining how is it technically implemented?
Super cool. Serious 90s vibes. I also tried to make a super clippy here. <a href="https://chatbotkit.com/examples/super-clippy" rel="nofollow">https://chatbotkit.com/examples/super-clippy</a> I think I match the color shema perfectly but does not have the same feeling as the original.
On a side note, I'm excited to see more an more ambitious side projects like these as LLMs empower hobbyists to do more in less time than was ever possible before.
I recently did this in our main system that we recently added an LLM feature to (for fun internally, not sending to prod) using<p><a href="https://github.com/pi0/clippyjs">https://github.com/pi0/clippyjs</a>
Very cool project! It would be really nice to have support for the other assistants that Microsoft released to use in place of Clippy (I'm particularly fond of the dolphin that was used in the Japanese version of Windows) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant#Assistants" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant#Assistants</a>
One of my very first AI projects was in the late 90s and used the Microsoft Agent API (which Clippy uses) as the interface.<p>It used Merlin rather than Clippy and was extremely basic as AI. But it was a fun project.
Really cool! I think OS integration can be taken a lot further. Looking forward to seeing more of this esp. as models get better! First thing that comes to mind are generative GTK widgets; small purpose-built widgets for any task, styled to match your setup.
Great idea and design, thanks for this! I was hoping since some time to see this :-D<p>I hope that one day a non-Electron app (to minimize resource usage when idle) will also appear!
I love this, and will unironically use it as a little desktop LLM, but it seems to completely ignore the prompt that’s in the settings. No matter what model I install it’s just “being” the default model.<p>The general idea is awesome though, and a lot more fun than just having a quake-terminal to interface with local LLMs via ollama.
This is so great! I wrote a short blog post about how well this fits into my Windows 95-inspired bootc project Blue95: <a href="https://blues.win/posts/chatting-with-ai-like-its-1995" rel="nofollow">https://blues.win/posts/chatting-with-ai-like-its-1995</a>
The idea is great but its personality needs some more sass. And maybe some contextual cues just so that it does the exact opposite of what would have been most helpful then :)<p>I feel like a text editor + clippy would be an even more potent combo! After all, that was clippy's original context.
Next up, "Rover" the dog from Microsoft Bob<p><a href="https://fabulous.systems/posts/2024/06/if-i-ever-get-a-dog-ill-name-it-rover-ms-bob-retrospective/" rel="nofollow">https://fabulous.systems/posts/2024/06/if-i-ever-get-a-dog-i...</a>
Fun fact: the newest generation (such as myself, a 23 year old programmer) were actually not even alive when Clippy existed. I only know of it from an Office reference. One day I will have something like that -- maybe MSN or internet explorer?
Would love to have a mac shortcut to toggle clippy chat window, and also so that when the chat window gets opened, the chatbox gets focuses automatically
Hahah I would
Love to see this thing back in windows. The only thing I use now is ms teams since they killed Skype and my foreign music teacher requires us to use it
I couldn't find how to get back to the normal chat screen from settings easily, and loading the same model file that works in LM studio crashed my computer.<p>I like the idea, though.
I can't get this to work on my aging 2017 Intel work mac.<p>> Error: Error invoking remote method 'ELECTRON_LLM_CREATE': Error: Error: NoBinaryFoundError
Makes me think of this short story.<p><a href="https://gwern.net/fiction/clippy" rel="nofollow">https://gwern.net/fiction/clippy</a>
Really interesting project. I love the combination of LLM with a 90s aesthetic. Great that it works with a really simple configuration and runs offline
This is such an amazing piece of work — truly impressive! Hats off to you If it supports Ollama and local LLMs too, it'll be absolutely unbeatable!
i think badgey may reflect the situation better than clippy.<p><a href="https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Badgey" rel="nofollow">https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Badgey</a>
This is cool, but does no one even look at what libraries they're shipping anymore? I mean, why does this Clippy-style LLM interface bundle:<p>- A JavaScript implementation of the Jinja templating language<p>- A full GitHub API client<p>- A library that takes a string and tells you if it's a valid npm package name<p>- A useless shim for the JavaScript Math module<p>And 119 other libraries? This thing would have taken up 10% of the maximum disk space available on a Windows 95 FAT16 volume.
Do this one next: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy</a>
Question for the devs in here...something I've been thinking about a lot recently. So I see that OP linked out to a public github repo...but when downloading the actual bundle, what's a quick way for me to determine that what I'm installing on my mac is actually the same as what's in the public repo? It's always seemed like a loophole to me ready for (potential) exploitation.<p>>> Ship project.
>> Link out Github repo on the static site somewhere
>> Gain trust instantly as users presume the public repo is what's used behind the scenes<p>Disclaimer: I'm a web dev and don't know a single thing about native MacOS software
It was great / depressing to mention Clippy at a recent meetup and see the generational divide between those who groaned and everyone who looked confused.
I'm all for these prepackaged local-only AI projects. Much more my speed than corporate cloud services. Real shame this one went down the path of choosing an embodiment that makes me want to shoot holes in my screen. It's even worse than those pixel art cats that chase my cursor on certain blogs. I miss plenty of things about the 90s, but I seriously doubt I'll live long enough to forget how much Clippy is not one of those things. Clippy would be more suitable for a horror game than an assistant. Going out of their way in the README to profusely thank Microsoft for summoning that hellspawn is just icing on the cake.<p>I hate to put down anyone's open source hobby project, and the guy looks so friendly and happy in his picture. But my honest reaction is fear of what further nightmares people are going to start animating with AI. I'd rather be hunted by a Boston Dynamics robot than have to face Clippy on my screen every day. Might as well add Rover from Microsoft Bob, some blink/marquee tags, a MIDI file playing in the background, and a minigame about diagnosing DMA conflicts in mixed plug and play and non-PnP systems. Some parts of the 90s should stay in the 90s.