Parley is a workspace for exploring ideas with AI. Conversations live in local Markdown files that you can edit, search, and annotate. Ask different models in the same conversation, revise earlier text, and add private notes as you learn. You can tweak your questions and ask again if an answer is unsatisfactory; you can edit the answer itself and delete AI slop, which improves subsequent answers. You can start a side question anytime in a branched chat, and navigate back with the outline without losing track.
The Parley app packages this workflow as a standalone Neovim app that is easy to install. You do not need an existing Neovim setup; the built-in tutorials teach the few editor controls needed to get started.
Parley in action. The full walkthrough is in the launch post.
The recommended starting point is the Parley app for macOS, installed with Homebrew:
brew install xianxu/parley/parley
parleyHomebrew installs the pinned editor dependencies with the app. The bundled
starter opens the Welcome tutorial without downloading editor plugins; follow
it to connect an account, choose a model, and send your first question. Editor
startup and local Markdown preview work offline; provider login and AI requests
still need a connection. Existing edited profiles must adopt the new
init.lua.new starter to use bundled dependencies.
Your Parley editor settings and chats are separate from your existing Neovim profile; provider logins are shared with other CLIProxyAPI clients.
See the app guide for updates and removal, or
configuration and recovery for profile
paths and settings. Existing Neovim users can use the
plugin setup guide:
require('parley').setup({}) works as is; see
minimal config for typical overrides.
These tutorials open as editable chats in the app. You can also read their bundled originals here.
- Welcome — editor essentials, connecting an account, choosing a model, and sending a question.
- Basics — finding conversations, navigating the outline, and branching into a side question.
- Advanced — what the model sees, project folders, local tools, chat-history search, and images.
- VIM Basics — modes, Back/Forward navigation, undo/redo, smart search, selection, clipboard editing, and saving.
As an AI-enhanced learning tool, Parley can teach you about Parley itself: it ships its own help and points the model at it. Try asking Parley about a feature as you work. Its documentation tool reads the README, tutorials, and atlas from your installed version.
For local verification, run ./parley_app from your checkout. It caches the pinned
dependencies on first launch; --nuke clears those dependencies while retaining
chats, settings and login. See local launcher instructions and the
recording workspace guide for --demo.
Parley is built entirely by AI agents, so contributing works a little differently.
It uses ariadne as its base development layer, and everything is managed inside
this GitHub repo. For example, issue tracking is in
./workshop/issues. Check out Ariadne for
development processes. Roughly:
- Clone this repo.
- Run
weave compile, which pulls the necessary base layers and compiles binaries that support the AI native development processes.weave refreshwill update local clone of ariadne dependencies, and current repo, then runweave comple. - Start your favorite AI coding tool:
claude,codex, etc. I use pair and couch, which provides a much stronger local development environment while leveraging other coding agents.
Before sending pull request, you should file an issue first, focusing on the feature you want to create and getting alignment with maintainer first. All pull request without agreement won't be checked. After all, in the era of AI coding, it's easy to write code; it's harder to agree what feature should be created.
Use GitHub issues for feature requests and bug reports.
Parley was adapted from gp.nvim and has since been redesigned so thoroughly that it bears little resemblance to it. See LICENSE.
All sorts of AI coding agents were used to create Parley.