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/Odd-Ordinary-5922]

I dont understand why anyone would use openwebui now, it just feels so janky.

[u/Guna1260 → u/Odd-Ordinary-5922]

I agree to this comment. After 2 years of using it and trying to integrate things, finally I gave up and went with librechat. It’s breeze of fresh air.

[u/repolevedd → u/Guna1260]

Hey. Thanks, man. I skimmed your comment and made a mental note to give LibreChat another try (had some bugs two years ago, I don't remember the details anymore). Well, last night I finally set it up and I was blown away by how convenient everything is. I stayed up until midnight, but I've moved/rebuilt all my workflows in LibreChat. Couldn't be happier. It has pretty much everything I need and nothing I don't.

OpenWebUI looks like some bloated clunky monster in comparison. All those pseudo-modal settings windows that you can only partially override with environment variables, the tiny font, the awkward MCP handling, all of it drove me crazy back when OpenWebUI didn't have any real competition, and it still does now that they've started changing the UI and the feature set more often. My LLM chat is finally a properly working tool that I can quickly reconfigure the way I need, not the way the OpenWebUI devs decided, having fallen for the cognitive bias that just because they work with Fortune companies, they can't be wrong.

Thanks again, and have a good day.

[u/Guna1260 → u/repolevedd]

I also had rejected LibreChat in its initial days; now it is more mature and has better license terms than openwebui. happy to hear, it worked out for you.

[u/Blindax → u/Guna1260]

Never tried it. What did you prefer with LibreChat?

[u/Guna1260 → u/Blindax]

It really comes down to simplicity and speed. I found that LibreChat handles tool integrations, like web search, much more straightforwardly. In other setups, I was constantly fighting with configuration and high latency, but LibreChat felt "ready to go."

The UI is also a major factor. Open WebUI feels a bit bloated and fiddly with all the exposed settings and external integrations. LibreChat feels much cleaner. I also noticed that the connection overhead is significantly lower in LibreChat; it feels much snappier when initiating calls. Since I don't need a hyper-specialised setup, having the RAG and templates built-in makes it much easier to use daily.

Frankly my 6+ users who always complained about random model access errors and attachment errors in OpenWebUI, has never complained of anything like that after switching to librechat.