ChatProjects is a free GPL-licensed WordPress plugin for multi-provider AI chat (OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, 100+ models via OpenRouter) and document RAG. Self-hosted, bring your own API keys, no middleware, no data leaving your server except the API calls themselves.

The RAG uses OpenAI Vector Stores and the Responses API and honestly it works way better than I expected. Upload your docs (PDF, DOCX, code files etc), they get chunked and embedded into a Vector Store that's created per project. Ask a question and file_search finds the relevant chunks, generates an answer with citations. You dont need to run your own vector db or mess with embeddings or chunk sizes - OpenAI handles all of it. For the "I just need to search and summarize my documents" use-case its remarkably good out of the box. Storage is about $0.10/GB/day on OpenAIs side.

Some notes:

- Yes this was vibe-coded (what isn't nowadays?). Its been running in production and it works. I'm sure there's things that would make a senior engineer wince. PRs welcome.

- WordPress isn't the cool choice, I know. But theres 800 million WordPress sites out there and alot of them are run by people who need AI tools but aren't going to spin up a Next.js app with Pinecone and LangChain and ChatGPT / Claude Teams is pricey for medium size teams when all they need is document analysis and basic chat. WordPress admin is the IDE for the rest of us.

- API keys encrypted with AES-256-CBC, messages stored locally in your WP database. No 'server in between you and the AI providers.

GitHub: https://github.com/chatprojects-com/chatprojects WordPress.org: https://wordpress.org/plugins/chatprojects/

Happy to answer questions, and appreciate any feedback!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46973738

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

MX is amazing on it, it runs as fast as I remember XP did when the laptop was new, hibernate works perfectly, screen dimming, extending display over multiple monitors and handling unplugging a monitor fine...all the things that Linux has been known to have issues with on random hardware.

I have now put in a bigger SSD and 8 more GB of RAM and the laptop is a great little media centre and simple gaming machine for the kids. I'm tempted to setup dual booting my Dell with MX now, it's a great desktop and project

wrt choosing Wordpress - it certainly does have a lot of drawbacks like you mention, our reasons for going with it:

1. There are about 10 web designers in our town, they all use Wordpres...Wordpress runs just about every small -= medium site in South Africa, so if I fall under a bus theres someone to pick up the (website) pieces

2. We had a very broad set of requirements - event ticketing with seating plans, accommodation booking with calendars, payment processing, members directory with subscription and free options. Since this was very much an 'after-hours' project we needed fairly plug-and-play functionality.

3. Low budget for hosting - this site needed to run on a shared server that already had PHP / MySQL

But thanks again for the tips, I will review them with the team and I'm sure we can get most sorted! (the broken links were Wordpress permalinks misbehaving...oops)

Regarding speed - we have done a fair bit of optimizing Litespeed cache and reducing the unnecessary scripts that get loaded but yea its still slower than we would like. Also since we are not using a CDN, if you are far from South Africa latency will be a big issue.

All the best & greetings from Greyton!

Greyton is definitely a hidden gem, for some reason it's not on many travel itineraries with most people doing a long one day drive from Cape Town to the Garden Route - but its without doubt the best village in the Cape, decent facilities & restaurants, fast Internet, lots of English speakers (if thats all you know!)

I don't know what the solution is wrt Airbnb, for someone planning a trip around a foreign country it offers some element of security and a lot of convenience...everything gets booked in one place. But for many small towns a tourist info office is more than just a place to pick up a map and its a social / emergency / Internet connection hub of many towns. Taking away the accommodation booking commission means that they can't operate or just get replaced by a sign board and some flyers that you can pickup at any petrol station anyway.

Greyton is fortunate in that there are lots of events, festivals, marathons & MTB races to sell tickets for and keep the office open, and it's close enough to Cape Town to get the short stays.

Next time you come, book your stay on GreytonTourism.com - insider tip, there are some unlisted, exceptional properties that can be booked...just send Ros an email on bookings at greytontourism dot com!

Significantly lower income for the tourist office meant it had to reduce its marketing activities for the village, offer shorter opening hours which affected the service it offers providing hiking & mountain biking maps and advice on routes, accommodation & events info & booking and helping many a traveler out who has run out of petrol (there is only one petrol station that is often empty, same story with ATMs)

We decided to make a Wordpress site in our spare time and we're pretty happy with it.

Take a look - would appreciate any comments, suggestions, insults, etc

https://greytontourism.com

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38345071

Points: 10

# Comments: 9

Check out https://greytontourism.com - our villages answer to Airbnb, made by yours truly

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37597063

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

If solar keeps getting installed at this rate, loadshedding will be just about completely averted within 2 years, for the entire population - whether you have solar or not. Poor people are benefitting from solar already from lower loadshedding levels, and by having more reliable power at work (since many businesses are now running on solar out of necessity...and generators of course)

SA still has a mostly functioning grid, just an ancient fleet of coal power stations and badly built new ones that don't give the power needed.

So while many homeowners wouldn't have installed solar if they weren't forced to, they (myself included) are also discovering that unlimited free power when the sun shines is awesome, and with a decent Lithium PO4 battery it's not hard to be fully off grid for much of the year. "Green loan" schemes from many banks are covering installation costs and it's easy to save more than half on you electricity bill since most of SA is really sunny.

+ the environment is a big winner...the more power plants worth of power that can be installed in solar & wind, the more old coal plants can be shut down forever.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36377748

Points: 2

# Comments: 0