# gptel

20 Hacker News commenters recommended gptel and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Emacs users recommend it for chatting with LLMs from any buffer, with an editable conversation and Org output. Its agentic features are roll-your-own in Elisp.

## Why people recommend it

- Editable chat buffer as context (2 comments): "It has a number of features, but primarily it just gives you a chat buffer you can freely edit at any time." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46910030)) "the document is the conversation context, and can be edited and annotated as you like" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47107981))
- Chat with LLMs from any buffer (3 comments): "My favorite feature of gptel is gptel-send - being able to chat with an LLM from just about any buffer is very cool." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49604411)) "What I love about gptel that I can send a request to an LLM from virtually anywhere" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47544671)) "this is very easy (and fun) to do in emacs with gptel as well" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49717228))
- Works well with Org mode (4 comments): "I use gptel and org mode when I was to be really hands on driving the development." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47939206)) "I've been using gptel, I'll have it generate org babel blocks I can tangle" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49465774)) "Just look at gptel and org-mode. Nothing else really even comes close." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48537090))
- Evaluates Elisp in the active session (2 comments): "gptel has the built-in tool to eval elisp, prompt the LLM to make changes in the active Emacs session and watch it do it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47962702)) "elisp generated in org mode babel blocks which is instantly executable is a fine way to have gptel improve itself" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47374880))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [agent-shell](https://hackerapproved.com/p/agent-shell.md): 25 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "gptel", https://hackerapproved.com/p/gptel/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).