CloakGPT

CloakGPT

Use your own ChatGPT browser session from the terminal.

CloakGPT is a local CLI that drives ChatGPT through CloakBrowser. It does not use the OpenAI API — it operates the account you are already signed in to.

• Persistent multi-turn conversations you can return to
• Independent sessions running concurrently in one shared browser
• Model (GPT-6 by default) and reasoning-level selection
• Markdown answers with their citation sources
• An OpenAI-compatible HTTP API server (cloakgpt serve) for Cline, Cursor, and Open WebUI
• Sign-in on a Linux server without a desktop, through an SSH-tunneled web viewer
• A portable Agent Skill so coding agents can drive it safely

Requirements

• 64-bit Linux, macOS, or Windows
• Permission to download and run CloakBrowser, an external binary under its own license
• About 500 MB of free space

A ChatGPT account is recommended rather than required. A one-shot ask works on a signed-out profile; persistent sessions and choosing a model or reasoning level need an account. Signing in is a one-time visible cloakgpt login. It needs a graphical desktop or, on a Linux server without one, a VNC web viewer reached over SSH; see Sign in on a server without a desktop.

A minimal Linux server or container may also lack the shared libraries CloakBrowser's Chromium needs, which stops the browser from starting even headless. See Installation for the packages.

Python, pip, Node.js, and Git are not needed to run a packaged release. Full details, including network and installer tooling, are in Installation.

Install a release

The installers download the executable for the current platform, verify its SHA-256 checksum, install it for the current user, and then download the external CloakBrowser binary. If the browser download fails, CloakGPT remains installed and the completion MOTD prints the browser retry and login commands. When both components install successfully in an interactive terminal, the installer automatically opens the visible ChatGPT login flow. Over SSH on a Linux server without a desktop, that flow is the remote login described below.

Choosing a prerelease, pinning an exact version, changing the install directory, updating, and uninstalling are all covered in Installation.

Linux and macOS

curl -fsSLO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/KoukeNeko/CloakGPT/main/scripts/install.sh
sh install.sh
rm install.sh

The default destination is ~/.local/bin/cloakgpt. If that directory is not already on PATH, add it to your shell configuration.

Windows

Invoke-WebRequest https://raw.githubusercontent.com/KoukeNeko/CloakGPT/main/scripts/install.ps1 -OutFile install.ps1
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\install.ps1
Remove-Item .\install.ps1

The default destination is %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\CloakGPT\cloakgpt.exe. The installer adds that directory to the user PATH; open a new terminal after installation. CloakGPT uses the current terminal for CLI input and output; its persistent-session daemon runs without opening a separate console window. Windows text I/O is set to UTF-8 even when the terminal initially uses Big5 (code page 950).

Use it

Sign in once, in a visible browser window. Skip this if you only want one-shot questions on a signed-out profile:

cloakgpt login

Ask a one-shot question. It runs headless and returns Markdown, with a ## Sources section when ChatGPT cited anything:

cloakgpt ask "Summarize the tradeoffs of optimistic locking."

Keep a conversation across turns by opening a session once and reusing its ID. Different session IDs run concurrently through one shared browser:

SESSION=$(cloakgpt session open)
cloakgpt ask "Explain CRDTs briefly." --session "$SESSION"
cloakgpt ask "Now contrast them with OT." --session "$SESSION"

Omitting --model selects gpt-6; omitting --reasoning keeps whatever the page is already set to:

cloakgpt ask "Design a rate limiter." --reasoning high --model gpt-5.6-sol

Agents should prefer a machine-readable event stream:

cloakgpt ask "Reply only: OK." --output jsonl

Sign in on a server without a desktop

On Linux without DISPLAY or WAYLAND_DISPLAY, such as Ubuntu Server or an LXC container, cloakgpt login runs the browser on a temporary virtual display and serves it through a VNC web viewer bound to 127.0.0.1. Install a VNC backend on the server, then run login there:

sudo apt install tigervnc-standalone-server novnc websockify
cloakgpt login

Login prints an SSH tunnel command, such as ssh -N -L 6100:127.0.0.1:6100 root@192.168.50.250, and a viewer address. Run the tunnel on your own computer, open the address in your browser, and sign in. The virtual display stops when login finishes; ask, sessions, and serve stay headless. Anyone who can open the viewer controls the login, so reach it only through SSH. KasmVNC, --remote/--local, and --port are covered in Remote login.

OpenAI-compatible API server

Start a local HTTP server for OpenAI clients such as Cline, Cursor, Open WebUI, and LangChain:

cloakgpt serve

Configure your client with:

• Base URL: http://127.0.0.1:8000/v1
• Model ID: gpt-6 or gpt-5.6-sol
• API key: any non-empty value, or the value passed to --api-key

Streaming replies start immediately and send keep-alive comments, so clients with short header timeouts, such as Cline on Node.js, don't give up while the browser works. Browser progress such as thinking or web search streams as delta.reasoning_content. Follow-up turns in the same client task reuse the active ChatGPT conversation, and a new task gets a fresh session.

The server listens on 127.0.0.1 by default. --host 0.0.0.0 shares it with other devices on your network, and without --api-key anyone who can reach it can send messages through your ChatGPT account, so always set --api-key when binding beyond localhost.

Waiting behavior, the JSONL protocol, concurrency rules, daemon control, server options, and browser management are documented in Usage.

Install the agent skill (recommended)

skills/use-cloakgpt follows the portable Agent Skills specification, so the same SKILL.md works with Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, and other compatible coding agents. Review the skill before installing it; an agent will follow its instructions with the permissions available to that agent.

For an interactive installation, run:

npx -y skills add https://github.com/KoukeNeko/CloakGPT/tree/main/skills/use-cloakgpt -g

The installer detects installed coding agents and asks which target to use when a choice is needed. The person installing the skill does not need to know an agent slug.

Common slugs and their user-level destinations are:

Do not treat a successful installer exit code as proof that the current agent can discover the skill. Check the native destination and reload or restart the agent when required.

Want a coding agent to perform the whole installation and verify it? Hand it the task in Agent setup.

Security and limitations

CloakGPT is a local, user-level CLI, not a sandbox or an authorization service. It intentionally drives a signed-in browser profile and can send messages, so anyone allowed to run it is trusted to operate that profile within the authority you granted. Session IDs select local conversations; they are not ChatGPT credentials. The browser profile, daemon metadata, and conversation URLs are sensitive local data and must not be committed or published.

Full trust boundaries and data locations: Security model.

CloakGPT is an unofficial browser-automation project. It is not affiliated with OpenAI, and using it is subject to the terms of the services it automates. CloakBrowser is a separately downloaded external binary under its own license and trust boundary. Full text: Legal.

Documentation

License

CloakGPT is available under the MIT License. Third-party components and dependencies retain their respective licenses.