gptel set-up fun, games and chatbots

I have heard wonderful things about gptel - the Emacs package that gives an interface to various LLMs. I will admit however I really struggled to get this working using my OpenAI API key with the Docs in their GitHub. Below is a quick guide for anyone else that got stuck - running a Linux machine.

First things, get gptel installed - add the below to your config:

(use-package gptel
	:ensure t)

(setq gptel-api-key (getenv "OPENAI_API_KEY"))

You will notice here we have to specify out OpenAI API key. It is possible to declare this directly in your config, that is such a stupidly bad idea I’m not even going to entertain it.

I opted for a locally declared variable hosted in my ~/.bashrc file - not the best as it is still plain text but for the purposes of testing I think this is sufficient.

To do this you need to add the below to your ~/.bashrc file, adding in your key:

 export OPENAI_API_KEY="sk-proj-XXX"

Then reload your ~/.bashrc by running source ~/.bashrc in your terminal.

Finally for Emacs to see your API key, you need to use a package like exec-path-from-shell - setting it up using the following in your Emacs config.

 (use-package exec-path-from-shell
   :ensure t)
 (when (memq window-system '(mac ns x))
   (exec-path-from-shell-initialize))
 (exec-path-from-shell-copy-env "OPENAI_API_KEY")

This needs be evaluated before gptel so make sure it is above it in your config - full example below:

(use-package exec-path-from-shell
   :ensure t)
 (when (memq window-system '(mac ns x))
   (exec-path-from-shell-initialize))
 (exec-path-from-shell-copy-env "OPENAI_API_KEY")

(use-package gptel
   :ensure t)

(setq gptel-api-key (getenv "OPENAI_API_KEY"))

Running M-x gptel, entering some text into the buffer and sending it with M-x gptel-send should elicit a response.

That is it, should now have it up and running - I am playing around with this package, expect more guide in the coming days.