Lamplit
Like reading in bed with the lamp on. Except the book writes back.
Lamplit is a free, open-source writing app for long stories told a chapter at a time, with a language model of your choosing writing beside you. It runs on your own machine, and your stories are files.
Download Lamplit Other ways to get it
Free and open source. No account, no subscription, nothing to pay us.
- Free, and yours. Open source, your stories are files on your own disk, no account, and nothing of ours in between.
- Any model. Bring a key from whoever you like, or run one on your own computer, and pay only them.
- Chapters, and a world that remembers. A long story stays coherent, and stays affordable.
The first run, in three questions
It asks three things, and then gets out of the way.
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1. Where to send the story
Pick a provider, paste its key, choose a model, and press Test to be sure.
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2. Who tells the story
One narrator’s voice, or a cast with words of their own.
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3. The opening scene
Where we are, when, and what is happening as the lights come up. Then you write.
Download
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Windows
For this computer
Nobody paid for a signing certificate, so Windows says it protected your PC: More info, then Run anyway. There is a portable build too, which installs nothing.
Download the installer -
Linux
For this computer
An AppImage installs nothing: allow it to run — Properties → Permissions — and open it. Or the .deb package, for Debian, Ubuntu and their relatives.
Download the AppImage -
macOS
For this computer
A build that opens without a fight needs Apple’s developer licence, which this project does not hold. Lamplit still runs on a Mac, as a zip you start by double-clicking. Contributing the builds would be very welcome.
No installer
What you are getting, and what you take on
Lamplit costs nothing and is yours to keep: the MIT licence lets you use it, copy it, change it, pass it on, and sell what you make of it. The one condition is that the copyright notice travels with any copy you hand on.
Nobody promises it works. It comes as it is, with no warranty of any kind: the licence says in capital letters that its authors owe you nothing if it loses a chapter, mis-spends your credit or refuses to start. That is the deal with all free software.
Nobody paid to sign the installer, which is why Windows objects. What you write goes to the provider you chose and nobody else, on their prices and their terms. Your stories are files on your own machine, so backing them up is yours to do. The app phones home for one thing, the version check, and that can be switched off.
This card is an explanation, not the licence: that is LICENSE, and the notices for the pieces Lamplit bundles are in NOTICE. If the two ever disagree, the files win.
Each download is about 110 MB, nearly all of it the browser engine the window is made of. The desktop app says where your stories are kept.
Other ways to run it: the zip, one megabyte, for a Mac or any machine that already has Node.js.
Where do I get a key?
An aggregator is the easiest start — one key, most models that exist: OpenRouter, NanoGPT, or Pollinations, which has a free tier that works with no key at all.
Or go straight to the people who made the model: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and a dozen more in the app’s own list.
Or pay nobody at all, and run the model on your own computer with Ollama or LM Studio. Models and parameters has the rest.
Where it comes from
Lamplit began as a replacement for SillyTavern, for someone who wanted its freedom — any model, your own key, your own machine — without its dashboard. If you have used SillyTavern, or paid for NovelAI, Sudowrite or Novelcrafter, this is the same idea pointed at long-form stories: text only, nothing hidden, and nothing to pay but what your provider charges.
The guide covers the whole app: chapters, the world your story remembers, what is sent to the model, and where your files are. What changed in each version is on the release notes. The source, and where to report anything wrong, is on GitHub.
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