Orihai
Interactive fiction you play for weeks - local-first, free
2 followers
Interactive fiction you play for weeks - local-first, free
2 followers
Orihai is a Windows app for long interactive fiction, narrated by any model you like: Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter, or fully local via Ollama and llama.cpp. Your keys and stories stay on your PC: one database file, no server. Always free.
Manuel again, a week later.
One thing to report came straight out of watching a week of real play.
A turn was spending tokens on work it had already done. The rules that keep the narrator in character were being framed from scratch on every single request, and on Orihai AI they were being paid for from scratch too. Both are fixed: the framing is built once, and the managed service now keeps it in a warm cache instead of resending it whole.
You get this wherever you narrate from. With your own key, it means a cheaper bill from your provider. On a local model, it means less work per turn on your own hardware. On Orihai AI, the managed option for people who would rather not handle a key, it is the most significant difference of the three, and it is what keeps that plan free while it is in testing.
Nothing to click and nothing to migrate. It is already running.
Still true from launch day: your stories are one file on your machine, your keys stay in the credential store, and the app is free forever.
Windows is what ships today. macOS is next, and I am looking for people with a Mac to test it, since I do not own one right now. If that is you, say so here.
Two weeks since launch, and eleven releases. A short account of what your comments turned into.
Chapters. A played story now has a table of contents. Right-click a turn, start a chapter there, and the story gets a first chapter running from its opening. Click the chapter name on the spine to open the contents: rename, delete a break, or ask the bookkeeping model for three names and keep one. Nothing is chaptered for you; the division is yours.
A second model reads the reply. The most common complaint was the narrator breaking its own rules: speaking for your character, knowing something it should not, and contradicting a turn from last week. Each reply is now audited before you see it. A breach is redrawn once with the verdict on the tail, and the turn carries a note saying so. It is one extra utility call per turn, on the cheap model.
Who believes what. The ledger keeps a row for what each character believes, so a character who was not in the room does not know what happened in it. Money and possessions are slots, and a fact you edit by hand outranks the extractor over the turns you wrote it on.
/gm. One prefix steps outside the story. Ask what has been established, and the answer comes from the story's own record, in a notebook beside the page, rather than being invented. Or say where you want the next few turns to go.
Orihai AI, the managed option, is now the first thing the site offers, with bring-your-own-key as the alternative. Its plan is still free while it is in testing. The app is free either way.
What next: keep telling us what breaks and on which model. The list is still the roadmap.
0.8.0 is out, and a scenario can now leave the app.
Share. Open a scenario's menu in the library, or press Share in the editor, and Orihai saves one file: title.orihai. It holds what the author wrote: the world sheet, the style, the characters, the opening scenes, the lore, and the places.
What it never holds. Anything from a playthrough. Since 0.8.0, a story keeps its own copy of the scenario from the moment it starts, so what happens in your story stays in your story, and editing the scenario changes the next story you start, never the one you are in. A shared file also carries no persona, no model profile, no key, and no images.
Open one. Double-click it or drag it onto the library. Every route ends at the same preview, which shows what is coming before anything is saved.
Also in 0.8.0: a form with unsaved changes asks before it closes, before an update installs, and before the app quits; and the first launch after an update says what changed.
There is no catalogue yet. Share scenarios wherever you already talk about them, and tell us what you made. The app is free either way.