Big-AGI, Msty, and other front-ends

Big-AGI's developer-flavoured chat, Msty's parallel-conversations approach, and other notable alternatives.

A few worth-knowing chat front-ends that don't fit the Open WebUI or LibreChat / AnythingLLM molds. None is the everywhere-default; each has a niche.

Big-AGI

★ Big-AGI (github.com/enricoros/big-AGI, MIT) — feature-rich open-source chat with a developer-tool flavour.

"Personas" + "Beam" (multi-model parallel response) + "Branching" + "Diagrams" + "Code Live."
Generates Mermaid / PlantUML / SVG diagrams inline.
Voice, image gen, code execution.
Multi-provider support including local Ollama / LM Studio.
More opinionated UI than Open WebUI; some users love it, some find it busy.
Pick if: you want strong developer-side tools and inline diagram generation, particularly for technical docs.

★ Msty (msty.app) — desktop app focused on parallel conversations across multiple models simultaneously.

macOS / Windows / Linux native.
"Split chat" — same prompt, multiple models, side-by-side responses.
Knowledge stack (RAG over folders).
"Delve mode" — drill-down on parts of a response into sub-conversations.
Free for personal use; paid Pro / Cloud-Aurora tier.
Closed source — caveat on FOSS purity.
Pick if: you compare model outputs constantly (e.g., "is GPT-5 or Claude or Llama 4 better at this?") and want a polished single-app workflow.

Hollama — minimalist, browser-only, talks directly to Ollama; covered in Jan / GPT4All.

The Open WebUI team and community publish mobile apps wrapping their server. Pal (github.com/m-pal/pal) is a Tauri-based desktop wrapper.

For roleplay / character chat — see text-generation-webui & KoboldCpp.

Open NotebookLM (github.com/lfnovo/open-notebook) — FOSS Google NotebookLM clone with podcast generation.
Surfsense — research notebook with tool calling.
These are RAG-meets-research tools rather than pure chat; useful complement.

You compare models constantly: Msty.
You want inline diagrams + Beam parallel models: Big-AGI.
You want a NotebookLM-style research notebook: Open NotebookLM.
You want the proven default: Open WebUI — start there, branch out only if it doesn't fit.