Onyx tops open-source AI chat hunt

This is less a launch than a signal that the market still has a UX gap: people want power, but not the clutter that dominates open-source AI chat today.

• –Onyx stands out because it bundles deep research, web/internal search, MCP actions, and custom agents in a polished interface.
• –The thread shows how badly current defaults are being judged; feature-rich doesn't help if the app feels like a command prompt.
• –Self-hosting remains a real constraint: the best-looking projects still need more setup and are fragile enough to scare off non-tinkerers.
• –The demand is for a Perplexity-like experience that is open source, localizable, and actually pleasant to use.