ChatGPT for VS Code deprecated & open-sourced

[gencay]

Hi everyone - with a heavy heart we are announcing decommissioning of this extension. We outlined the reasons in the Readme. We unfortunately lost the fun part of working on such agile project with open-source in mind, free-to-use tool due to potential Terms of Use violations of OpenAI service via one of the features we have built during the first days of the development of this extension. Our intention was to slowly decommission that feature as API gets parity with web version, however we came to learn that in vs-code it's not possible to remove old versions of the app without removing the whole extension.

As an apology to the community who believed in this project from the start, who made it fun working, we are giving the source code as we initially promised when we started this project stripping out the feature -Browser autologin-.

Please feel free to use it however you'd like.

There are many many great extensions on vscode marketplace who offers similar or even better functionality than this extension. We'd recommend you to try them out.

However, we can no longer support developing this feature while being under the pressure of the legal sides of things, since this was always meant to be free-to-use tool for the community.

Thank you all and our apologies to everybody who believed in the future of this extension and to those who downloaded and used our extension thinking it was official - It was never ever our intention to gain popularity with that but instead with features we are working on with the community, which worked really well for the last couple months.

I'm sure someone will create wonders with this or their own ChatGPT implementation in VS Code and it'll be groundbreaking. But the weight of potential legal issues isn't helping us focus on further development of this feature as such a small team who could spare only a couple hours of a month.

I hope you understand our position and thank you again for being part of this amazing journey.

---

Update 1: #239 (comment)
Update 2: #239 (comment)
Update 3: The extension continues to live under a different identity by another team. Please read the last post

TLDR; Get the new extension here

[fj-auto]

sad

[david-dev-br]

Very sad, the best chatGPT extension for VS Code!

[drupol]

Very sad, I discovered it this morning and I submitted a PR on NixOS project to include your extension... I just closed the PR :( Thank you for your work on this.

[KyiMoeTun]

I am very sorry to hear this. I was just looking for your extension back and forth and it just got disappeared like magic. Your extension has been really helpful for my projects. Thank you.

[flutterrausch]

It's been a fun ride. Good luck to you(r team) Ali!

[CCCoralie]

vscode-chatgpt is an absolutely wonderful project, Thank you for all the contributions and efforts you and your teams have made towards it.

[4722794]

I can't believe how attached I got to this project. Thank you Ali! Any instructions on how to create a .vsix file from source code? Can't ask vscode-chatgpt now can I?
I am on a mac and have no previous experience building extensions.

[Christopher-Hayes]

I appreciate your work on this, and thank you for open-sourcing it.

Update - For anyone wanting a drop-in replacement for the API part of it, I've published my fork here: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=chris-hayes.chatgpt-reborn
I plan to slowly remove all the browser related code. Small incremental updates are also planned.
Repo: https://github.com/Christopher-Hayes/vscode-chatgpt-reborn

Update 2 - Gencay has a new API-only extension, I suggest taking a look at that one first (See his comment). For my fork, this will free me up to take it in a slightly different direction I have in mind. (I'm particularly interested in automation flows) This week I'll be releasing a new version that sets the groundwork with a React frontend.

[blacksilvergeek]

Very sad, but the API is still ok to use, so will there be a re-release without auto-login?

[gencay]

Thank you all 🙏 @Christopher-Hayes already took the initiative and it looks like he has a plan to continue developing it even further. I recommend you check out his fork and follow his updates on GitHub. @Christopher-Hayes please make sure to go through open discussions and issues (I marked all of the recently closed issues with 'help-wanted' for you to read on, some are relatively easy to address, some are more involved. I'd be happy to support your work in the future.

@4722794 thank you! you can follow the instructions on Readme or just run vsce package to create a vsix and then manually install it. Instructions on how to package the extension for vs-code

[Whytehorse2022]

@Whytehorse2022 if this is an issue with using my fork, please open an issue in that repo, I don't want to pollute this thread with changes that I'm making separately in a fork. I'll double-check defaults, I'm pushing fairly rapid updates today, so something may have broken it.

Issues for "ChatGPT Reborn": https://github.com/Christopher-Hayes/vscode-chatgpt-reborn/issues

I've deleted my messages in this thread and filed a bug in your repo. Feel free to delete any replies to my deleted comments in this thread to clean it up.

[qcgm1978]

Why not republish a new extension and remove the older one?

[drupol]

Why not republish a new extension and remove the older one?

What's the difference with what they are doing right now with the fork ?

[KELETU66666]

Thank you for your contributions to the community

[Asher-Ding]

thanks for your contributions.

[DrShushen]

Very sad to hear - but ultimately the browser component might not even have been that crucial. I liked the code parts, especially the fact that you could customize and add custom prompts. Excited about @Christopher-Hayes fork.

[papandadj]

何止是sad，简直是sad

[YeshuoShu]

So sad💔, thanks for all your work

[zhao-wuji-ahh]

I am so sad to hear about that.Thank you for you job.

[b-mendoza]

I'm so sad to hear this 😢

The best ChatGPT extension so far, thanks for your contribution and hard work ❤️

[gencay]

Hi everyone,

First of all, I would like to thank you again for all the kind words and helping us re-think of an alternative solution🙏

🚀 We are now releasing an independent version on the marketplace. Please checkout ChatGPT - Genie AI.

Some changes:

• The features we just recently had worked on, are released along with the original ChatGPT - VS Code extension (Without the Browser capabilities - Only API Key). If you have GPT-4 API access, you may try that as well but gpt3.5-turbo will be the default for now.

• Storing API Key in settings.json won't be available due to potential security issues. The only option to store API Key is securely using VS Code's Secret Storage. If you are interested in: settings.json file can be read by any extension, it's stored without encryption, it's sync'ed between your vs code instances etc. We don't want the extension to cause any vulnerability to the end user.

• Original version will be marked as deprecated.

• The open feature requests, bug reports and discussions here, will be gradually moved over to Genie AI side as a respect to original authors of those issues and help make the extension even better.

• The new repo will contain only documentation and localization efforts going forward.

✨ There are some exciting new features that you may want to give a try. Check the changelog out. *There are some new buttons at the top toolbar - don't forget to explore.

📞 If you are strong in design and would like to help us re-create the demo gifs and screenshots, feel free to send PRs to the new repo. We need to revamp the documentation and would love some help there with the extension's new identity. Also, if you know of some really cool and simple static HTML template that would fit this extension's website, let us know we'd appreciate any help during this transition.

❤️ Please check out the new extension and if you can re-rate the extension for faster visibility, we would really appreciate it. Although, we have left ~.5 Million users back in the old extension, I think it was ethically the right decision to discontinue it with all the restrictions from marketplace. However, with your help I think the extension can get to that point again sooner than later. Please share and spread love!

Thank you all!

[drupol]

Dear @gencay, what's going to happen with the fork from @Christopher-Hayes ?

[gencay]

Dear @gencay, what's going to happen with the fork from @Christopher-Hayes ?

I will be supportive of all forked extensions on the marketplace. I recommend checking out his version as well, both extensions should work at the same time without any conflicts. See which one suits your use case better.

[Huniko519]

Dear @gencay.
Your vscode extension was fantastic.
I have a question.
I built the discontinued version with vsix and uploaded it to my githbub repo, is this a violation?

[gencay]

@Huniko519 the open-sourced version of the original extension on this repository doesn't have any known Terms of Use violations. Nevertheless, I'd recommend doing your own due diligence.

However, you didn't really need to create a repo just for the vsix, as the vsix package is a produce of the codebase anyway. I have the instructions on Readme on how to build, run and package locally.

[Huniko519]

@gencay, Okay. Got it.
Thanks for reponse.

[drewjhart]

thanks for the effort - the extension was great

[hwadong860]

However, u r cool~

[Dinoraptor101]

This crushes me; I was planning a company-wide adoption using this extension. This was hands down the fastest / cleanest GPT extension out there! Go, Chris!
I look forward to seeing this extension reborn!

[gencay]

@Dinoraptor101 🙏 Try out Chris's fork as well our re-published extension called ChatGPT - Genie AI - Original extension rebranded and reworked. The marketplace will soon show deprecated and redirect users to Genie AI. See my announcement here: #239 (comment)

[Christopher-Hayes]

To provide an update on the state of my "ChatGPT Reborn" fork - I imagine Genie AI will see the most frequent updates, so I'd recommend first trying out the new Genie AI extension instead of my fork.
At least for the time, I will be continuing development. I'm nearly complete on a refactor to use React + components for the UI. This may make my fork less performant. I have ideas related to automation and error resolution that may differ from Gencay's vision.
I'd advise using my fork if you like the new changes that are coming, but if you want an extension that starts where "VSCode ChatGPT" left off, definitely look at @gencay's new "ChatGPT: Genie AI".

[gencay]

@Christopher-Hayes really appreciate your work, looking forward to seeing the React implementation - it'll definitely be easier to maintain as it scales! I updated the Readme referencing your extension as well!

[adityapandita97]

Great work @gencay! Just wanted to ask that I was trying to install this setup on my local mac earlier when the extension was deprecated and I was unable to do the same. I referred to the steps that you provided in the deprecation update, but sadly post cloning the repo I was unable to use yarn/npm install package.json and run the chatbot using my terminal. Can you please share the steps for that implementation? It will be really helpful for me to run it locally.

PS: Thanks for getting back another version for the same. The genie will do wonders :)

[PierrunoYT]

Hey there

Thanks for the work it was the best extension for VS Code.
Can I maybe know why you stopped working on it and released a new extension?

All the best!

[97-tianyan]

Thank you for your contribution, your extension is useful to me

[hopee-do]

Thank you for continuing this utility it helps me a lot. I look forward to seeing your product improve day by day. Thanks a lot.

[Karest2512]

Thank you for continuing this utility it helps me a lot. This is the best add-on for me so far.

[mduccc]

This extension helps me a lot. Thank you!

[muhammadullah1]

chatGPT is new there will be bugs but my openion it was best instead of removing it release new version

[jwgo]

Thank you for your contribution.

[FrancineHuang]

Thank you for making a great extension!

[sulemanzain1]

Hi everyone - with a heavy heart we are announcing decommissioning of this extension. We outlined the reasons in the Readme. We unfortunately lost the fun part of working on such agile project with open-source in mind, free-to-use tool due to potential Terms of Use violations of OpenAI service via one of the features we have built during the first days of the development of this extension. Our intention was to slowly decommission that feature as API gets parity with web version, however we came to learn that in vs-code it's not possible to remove old versions of the app without removing the whole extension.

As an apology to the community who believed in this project from the start, who made it fun working, we are giving the source code as we initially promised when we started this project stripping out the feature -Browser autologin-.

Please feel free to use it however you'd like.

There are many many great extensions on vscode marketplace who offers similar or even better functionality than this extension. We'd recommend you to try them out.

However, we can no longer support developing this feature while being under the pressure of the legal sides of things, since this was always meant to be free-to-use tool for the community.

Thank you all and our apologies to everybody who believed in the future of this extension and to those who downloaded and used our extension thinking it was official - It was never ever our intention to gain popularity with that but instead with features we are working on with the community, which worked really well for the last couple months.

I'm sure someone will create wonders with this or their own ChatGPT implementation in VS Code and it'll be groundbreaking. But the weight of potential legal issues isn't helping us focus on further development of this feature as such a small team who could spare only a couple hours of a month.

I hope you understand our position and thank you again for being part of this amazing journey.

Update 1: #239 (comment) Update 2: #239 (comment)

I was writing a code and in the middle of code I stuck then I use to complete code from this extension and then found this extension was disabled. really sad when I read this issue.

[Whytehorse2022]

To provide an update on the state of my "ChatGPT Reborn" fork - I imagine Genie AI will see the most frequent updates, so I'd recommend first trying out the new Genie AI extension instead of my fork. At least for the time, I will be continuing development. I'm nearly complete on a refactor to use React + components for the UI. This may make my fork less performant. I have ideas related to automation and error resolution that may differ from Gencay's vision. I'd advise using my fork if you like the new changes that are coming, but if you want an extension that starts where "VSCode ChatGPT" left off, definitely look at @gencay's new "ChatGPT: Genie AI".

I'm a react dev learner going through coding boot camp so I'll have a look at both projects. Maybe I'll find a way to contribute to this one if I'm lucky.

[Tim-Rambo]

Hi everyone - with a heavy heart we are announcing decommissioning of this extension. We outlined the reasons in the Readme. We unfortunately lost the fun part of working on such agile project with open-source in mind, free-to-use tool due to potential Terms of Use violations of OpenAI service via one of the features we have built during the first days of the development of this extension. Our intention was to slowly decommission that feature as API gets parity with web version, however we came to learn that in vs-code it's not possible to remove old versions of the app without removing the whole extension.

As an apology to the community who believed in this project from the start, who made it fun working, we are giving the source code as we initially promised when we started this project stripping out the feature -Browser autologin-.

Please feel free to use it however you'd like.

There are many many great extensions on vscode marketplace who offers similar or even better functionality than this extension. We'd recommend you to try them out.

However, we can no longer support developing this feature while being under the pressure of the legal sides of things, since this was always meant to be free-to-use tool for the community.

Thank you all and our apologies to everybody who believed in the future of this extension and to those who downloaded and used our extension thinking it was official - It was never ever our intention to gain popularity with that but instead with features we are working on with the community, which worked really well for the last couple months.

I'm sure someone will create wonders with this or their own ChatGPT implementation in VS Code and it'll be groundbreaking. But the weight of potential legal issues isn't helping us focus on further development of this feature as such a small team who could spare only a couple hours of a month.

I hope you understand our position and thank you again for being part of this amazing journey.

Update 1: #239 (comment) Update 2: #239 (comment)

Sad to see this extension/project go as it made learning to program a bit easier.
I hope someone finds the time to contribute or even fork this extension and make it come back to life!

[flutterrausch]

@Huniko519 the open-sourced version of the original extension on this repository doesn't have any known Terms of Use violations. Nevertheless, I'd recommend doing your own due diligence.

Hey Ali, I don't get the problem with auto-login? That was maybe the best feature (even tho fiddely). I skimmed thru the terms of use, and did not find any mention. In this quote you said no problem, too.

What was the risk here? Some kind of "Overusing" the free feature? Feel free to DM me on twitter ;)

[gencay]

The lengthy conversation and my initial post on the path of this extension caused some confusions. The extension is now available under a different identity and will be worked on by a different team going forward.

Please read on or TLDR; download it here

To answer your question @flutterrausch and all others, I will try to summarize them all in this post and lock the conversation to prevent any further notifications to the contributors 🙂 here.

The open-sourced version of the extension is stripped off of the problematic feature. That's why I said no known violations that you could encounter with it anymore. However, I still recommend that everyone should do their own due diligence and be comfortable with using these types of extensions. AI became a reality just way too quickly to fully grasp the circumstances.

I agree, browser was such a neat way to integrate the power of AI in vs code, especially during the first days of ChatGPT release. Once the API catches up, the plan was to remove that functionality at some point (API in the beginning didn't support conversations until GPT-3.5 came out). It was using puppeteer, based on this open source project -adapted to work in vs code.

I did all this work without any affiliation to any organization as a hobby project. Unofficially, completely for free.

On March 14, OpenAI updated their Terms of Use and added 'automated or programmatic' phrase, which wasn't there at the time of development of this feature. See OpenAI ToS 2.c.iv. The full phrase: "You may not except as permitted through the API, use any automated or programmatic method to extract data or output from the Services, including scraping, web harvesting, or web data extraction;". I am not a lawyer, but using puppeteer violates this for the end-user, per my understanding.

After seeing this, I did not want the users of this extension to violate Terms of Use unknowingly and wanted to unpublish old versions from the marketplace. Unfortunately, I came to learn that it isn't possible, check out this issue -it's been active since 2017: microsoft/vsmarketplace#235. So the only option in my opinion was to deprecate the extension. After deciding to deprecate the extension I got so many great messages about how this extension had helped them and they wished the extension could continue. I was contacted by a group of friends later on that they wish to continue the project as a more fully fledged product + due to overwhelming number of requests 🙏, I agreed to help them continue this effort.

What happens now?

I won't be fully committed to the new extension going forward but will help Genie AI team ramp up on this and make this an even more awesome product. I vouch for them, please:

• install the new extension: ChatGPT - Genie AI,
• go follow them,
• show love and rate

and spread the word! I fully support the continuation of this extension under the new identity + forks from open source community. Check Readme for other extensions and if you have one, feel free to send PR to update Readme.

For myself, I have different ideas that I plan to focus on, again around utilizing the incredible power of AI, in the future. Let's see how it goes!

If you face any issues using the Genie or the forked extensions, please consider creating a new issue on their respective GitHub pages.