About
Relay is a self-hostable LLM environment with support for OpenAI, DeepSeek, Anthropic, xAI and zAI out of the box. It is incredibly simple to setup and get started. The application is distributed as a RubyGem. It has a minimal set of dependencies - built on Roda, Sequel, Falcon, llm.rb, HTMX and web sockets.
There is support for connecting to MCP servers too - both HTTP and stdio. You can
add your own tools to ~/.relay/tools which is a neat way to extend the environment
with your own functionality. The database uses SQLite3 to keep things simple - the
goal is to have something you can setup in under two minutes.
Getting started
Install
Install the gem:
gem install relay.app --pre
Go through interactive setup, start the server, and visit http://localhost:9292.
relay setup
relay start
Features
- Install and setup in 2 minutes
- Localize your chats and mcp settings to your user account
- Connect to multiple providers (OpenAI, xAI, Anthropic, Google, DeepSeek, zAI)
- Connect to MCP servers
- Cancel in-flight requests and tool execution cleanly
- Run tools concurrently
- Make it yours: extend and customize with your own tools and system prompt
- Lightweight architecture
Sounds cool, how does it look?
Sign-in
Chat
MCP
How easy is it to setup?
Very easy.
How do I add my own tool?
Before running relay start you should add a ~/.relay/tools/<yourtool>.rb.
The tool will be automatically made available to the LLM. This is how a tool
might look - it is not very useful because it does not emit command output
but it serves as a simple example that you can modify and change to meet
your requirements:
class Shell < LLM::Tool
name "shell"
description "Run a shell command"
parameter :command, String, "The command to run"
parameter :arguments, Array[String], "The command arguments"
required %i[command]
def call(command:, arguments:)
{ok: system(command, *arguments)}
end
end
Wait, what is a tool?
A tool contains a name, a description, and optional parameters. It is attached to a method, and that method that can be called. The model or LLM decides when and how to call a tool. A tool can do anything you can imagine, and it can extend the abilities of the LLM. Suddenly a LLM can search the web, run code, and anything you can think of. They're a powerful way to extend the capabilities of an LLM.
An MCP server can also expose pre-packaged tools, and those can be especially powerful for talking to GitHub or your own Forgejo instance.
What are the default tools?
The relay-knowledge tool returns documentation for both Relay
and llm.rb - ask about either
of those, and you will be able to have an informed conversation
about both. Good for learning how to use llm.rb, and write your
own tools.
There is also a set of tools that manage a playlist of songs that can be played inline in the chat, and you can also add your own songs or remove existing ones through the same tools. The only requirement is that it is a YouTube URL.
What provider is the best value?
DeepSeek. I highly recommend it. The context window is 1M. I have been using it all the time - especially for Relay development, and despite my heavy usage, it cost only 80 cents overall. It's almost free. I used it a lot. I'd estimate that a 1M context window costs 14 cents or so.
What about Ollama and friends?
llm.rb provides support ollama, llama.cpp, and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. But Relay does not surface it as a feature. I haven't had the time or resources to setup either ollama or llamacpp locally.