Aethera

A web dashboard for AI-powered conversations and image generation, backed by any OpenAI-compatible API.

Features

• Chat Interface — streaming responses with Markdown rendering and syntax highlighting
• Thinking Support — displays model reasoning/thinking content when available
• Multiple Conversations — switch between threads with auto-generated titles
• Image Generation & Editing — create and edit images with customizable prompts, masks, and seeds
• Token Statistics — real-time prompt/generation throughput and timing metrics
• Theme Support — light and dark mode toggle
• Structured Output — JSON schema-based structured responses from models
• Embedded Frontend — single binary deployment with assets compiled in

Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Go 1.25.5+
• Bun
• An OpenAI-compatible API endpoint

Using Make

make all              # Build frontend + backend
./backend/dist/aethera

Using Docker

make docker
docker run -p 8080:8080 \
  -e AETHERA_LLM_ENDPOINT=https://api.example.com/v1 \
  -e AETHERA_LLM_KEY=your-key \
  -v aethera-data:/app/data aethera

Manual Build

# Frontend
cd frontend && bun install && bun run build && cd ..

# Copy assets to backend
mkdir -p backend/web/static
cp -R frontend/public/. backend/web/static/

# Backend
cd backend && go build -o ./dist/aethera ./cmd
./dist/aethera

Open http://localhost:8080 in your browser.

Configuration

Configuration is available via CLI flags and environment variables (prefixed AETHERA_):

Flag	Env Var	Default	Description
--llm-endpoint	AETHERA_LLM_ENDPOINT	(required)	OpenAI-compatible API endpoint URL
--llm-key	AETHERA_LLM_KEY		API key for authentication
--data-dir	AETHERA_DATA_DIR	./data	Directory for chats, settings, and images
--static-dir	AETHERA_STATIC_DIR	(embedded)	Serve frontend from disk (for development)
--listen	AETHERA_LISTEN	localhost	Listen address
--port	AETHERA_PORT	8080	Listen port

Example:

AETHERA_LLM_ENDPOINT=https://api.example.com/v1 AETHERA_LLM_KEY=your-key ./backend/dist/aethera

Development

A Nix flake is provided for the development environment:

nix develop   # or use direnv with .envrc

This provides Go, Bun, gopls, typescript-language-server, golangci-lint, and watchman.

For hot-reload development:

make dev

This starts the Go backend (serving frontend from disk) and the frontend in watch mode concurrently.

Getting Started

1. Configure Your API — set AETHERA_LLM_ENDPOINT and optionally AETHERA_LLM_KEY environment variables
2. Start the Server — run the binary and navigate to http://localhost:8080
3. Configure Model Selectors — navigate to Settings to configure model selectors for chat and image generation

Supported AI Services

Aethera works with any OpenAI-compatible API, including:

• OpenAI
• Local LLMs (Ollama, llama.cpp, LocalAI, etc.)
• Any other compatible service

Llama.cpp-specific features like per-token timings are automatically detected.

License

See LICENSE file for details.