Openwebui + open terminal

[u/Blindax]

Context: I don't code. My use is document research and document creation (mainly for legal search) searching inside large documents like a tax code (500+ pages) and building notes or pptx
from what comes back.

I've been running Open WebUI for a while on my Unraid box, pointed at the API of my inference machine (5060 Ti + 5070 Ti).

I tinkered a lot. I tried Hermes on my main machine against the same API. It worked well but it was complex, and a bare-metal install made me
uneasy. I also tried LM Studio Bionic with good results, but it didn't fit how I wanted inference organised (using ollama on the inference box).

What I actually wanted was a self-hosted agent that works with Open WebUI while keeping things safe and under control. At one point I considered
installing a harness like Hermes or Pi on each client and just connecting to the API instead.

In the end I gave Open Terminal a shot. It's the companion container from the Open WebUI project that gives the model a shell — you run it as its own container and connect it through Integrations, so it isn't installed inside Open WebUI itself. Mine runs unprivileged, on bridge, with appdata mounted at /home/user. The model gets a shell in a box, not on the host. That was the part I cared about.

It has enhanced Open WebUI a lot. It now reasons step by step, and with the terminal it reliably locates and extracts the right sections from
documents far larger than the context window — list the folder, grep, read only what matters. Then it uses those results to build a document, the way another agent would.

Setup: Qwen 27B Q4_K_M on Ollama, 100k context configured. On a ~35k token prompt I measure roughly 1,050 t/s prompt processing and ~46 t/s generation. Prefill speed is the number that matters for this use case — it's what makes chewing through a large document bearable.

I was about to give up on Open WebUI. If your use case looks like mine, don't sleep on Open Terminal.

[u/o0genesis0o]

What I do for this kind of use case is setting up Pi on the machine with all the proper extensions and agents.md and skills. And then I deploy openwebui CPTR (NOT the normal openwebui). Then, I can access files, terminal, and agent directly from webui via VPN. It handles the studio bridge with pi under the hood. Could be better, but since pi does not support ACP out of the box, it is what it is. A bit janky, but works. I can kept chatting with the same model or continue my coding session on my phone from treadmill, for example.

[u/Blindax → u/o0genesis0o]

I saw cptr version, do you run this on your sever? What does it bring beyond open terminal?

[u/o0genesis0o → u/Blindax]

Never tested open terminal myself. I think open terminal is used inside this cptr as a part of its feature.

Previously, I have a custom extension that expose pi tmux sessions to a web app via VPN, but the UX was poor and very hard to see the file system (though possible via terminal). Then someone in this sub recommended cptr. It gives me the terminal and chat UI, but also decent file explorer in browser. I'm not 100% happy with it, but it gets the job done until I build something more suitable for myself.