When people think of the burgeoning world of artificial intelligence, they think about LLMs like Deepseek, ChatGPT, and Gemini. Many don’t realize that another layer exists.
The programs that you use to connect to these things are important as well. For most people, these will be those programs put out by the LLM’s quaint startup corporation itself. If you visit ChatGPT on the web, for example, Sam Altman’s people control both the LLM you speak with and the interface through which you speak with it. I don’t know terribly much about all this yet.
I’m writing this in November of 2025. So far, I’ve begun using a LLM frontend called SillyTavern, have experimented with ChatGPT. I primarily use Deepseek with the former for character dialogues. I’m learning how OpenRouter works and how to change the settings on an LLM so that you get the best possible results, and how prompting actually works.
In the meantime, here are some things I’ve written, and links to pages about, different programs that allow you to access LLMs. I won’t include many guides of my own here because I haven’t got the knowledge base (yet). My installation of SillyTavern was provided by someone else and is not maintained by me. I’m slowly learning more about how it works. I’m moving to other LLM frontends too.
As of November 2025, there is not much content here. I am going to share more later!
Programs and More
A quick, slightly bewildered glance what completion APIs are, how OpenRouter handles them, and why text and chat modes kept behaving like different creatures for me... sometimes. Will update with more notes later?
I couldn't handle the normal SillyTavern interface because it was boring, so I turned it into what I call the Sunrise Tearoom. It can't be duplicated, it runs terribly, but I absolutely adore it!