What it does

revChatGPT is a Python package with two personalities. V1 reverse-engineers the ChatGPT web interface so you can automate conversations with an access token or email/password. V3 is a thin wrapper around OpenAI’s official paid API. Both come with a command-line chat client and a developer API for streaming or single-shot responses.

The interesting bit

The V1 layer is the cat-and-mouse part: it routes traffic through an open-source Cloudflare bypass proxy to avoid being blocked, and supports plugins, GPT-4 browsing, and conversation history manipulation. The README cheerfully notes rate limits of 5 requests per 10 seconds on the proxy and 50 per hour from OpenAI — enough to remind you this is a tolerated workaround, not a supported platform.

Key highlights

• Dual API: V1 for free web-interface access (unofficial), V3 for official API keys
• CLI with multi-line input, history editing, and tab-completion of previous prompts
• Plugin support in V1, including unverified third-party plugins installable from code
• Config-driven: JSON file at $HOME/.config/revChatGPT/config.json
• Python 3.9 minimum, 3.11+ recommended

Caveats

• V1 email/password login excludes Google and Microsoft accounts
• Windows users must manually create a HOME environment variable for config discovery
• Plugin installation from code “may or may not work” if the plugin wasn’t already installed via the web UI

Verdict

Worth a look if you need to script ChatGPT without an API budget, or want a quick CLI wrapper for the official API. Skip it if you need reliability guarantees — this is a personal project with a “Don’t sue me” disclaimer.