brownie
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Free · open source · runs on your Mac

A house spirit that lives in your Mac and does the chores while you sleep.

Every night, while your Mac is plugged in, Brownie reads what’s new in your life — messages, mail, notes, files — with a small model that runs entirely on the machine, writes it into private notes, and leaves a handful of morning cards: things worth your attention, each ready to do in one tap.
Download the beta for macOS View on GitHub macOS 14 or later · Apple silicon · AGPL-3.0
What happens overnight

Reads on your Mac. Writes notes. Leaves the morning ready.

1 · It reads, on this Mac

At the hour you chose — 3 AM unless you say otherwise — the Mac wakes itself. A 4-billion-parameter model on your own GPU reads everything new since last night and decides what matters. Anything sensitive — ID numbers, cards, medical records — is erased on sight and never stored.

2 · It writes your notes

Short summaries — never the messages themselves — go to the brain you chose, which keeps a knowledge base of plain Markdown: one note per person, per group, per plan. It’s an Obsidian vault; open it there, on your phone too.

3 · It leaves the morning ready

A handful of cards, ranked: a reply someone is waiting on, a promise you made, a renewal, a meeting to prepare for. Each shows why it’s there, the evidence, and a draft in your voice. You press Send — Brownie never does.

Beyond the morning

The notes are the product.

Loops

Every promise, both ways, found in your chats. A card you fired comes back if nobody replied. What did I promise?

Ask

“What did I promise Meera?” Answers from your notes, every claim linked to the message it came from.

Hands & recipes

Teach it once by doing it. Hands replays it — by app link, accessibility tree, or screen — and stops before Send.

Your notes, your vault

Plain Markdown with [[wikilinks]]. Open in Obsidian; mirror to iCloud Drive for your phone. How it compares to the AI plugins.

Memory for your other AIs

Claude Desktop, Cursor and any MCP app can read your notes — on this Mac only, with a log of what they asked.

Briefs & the Sunday letter

Ten minutes before a meeting: who’s in the room and what you owe them. On Sunday: your week, in a letter.

What left your Mac

Every request to the brain, byte for byte. Or choose “This Mac only” and the answer is always zero. Next to Private Cloud Compute.

Fresh during the day

Reads what’s new every hour while you’re away and the Mac is on power. Cards refresh; nothing is sent.

What we never do

Private by construction, not by promise.

There is no Brownie server. There is nothing to sign up for. Every one of these has a test in the open-source code.
  • Raw data never leaves your Mac. Only short, scrubbed summaries reach the model you chose — and you can read every byte that did.
  • Sensitive things are erased on sight. ID numbers, cards, passwords, medical records: nothing stored, not even a log line with content.
  • Nothing is sent without your tap. Ever. There is no auto-send setting. Hands stops before Send, Pay and Delete.
  • No account. Your key, your Mac, your files. Brownie has no server to hold anything.
  • Deletion is total. Panic wipe erases everything Brownie knows in one hold; uninstall removes the rest.
What it reads

The apps your life actually happens in.

FilesApple NotesiMessageWhatsAppTelegramCalendarMail · any IMAP inboxSlack · Linear · Notion · GitHub — via MCP
You choose which. Chats are off until you pick them one by one. Turn a source off and its notes stay; nothing new is read.
Free and open source

Read the code that reads your life.

Brownie is AGPL-3.0, pure Swift, and built in the open. Download the app, or build it yourself in ten minutes. Bring your own OpenAI or Claude key — or run fully local with no key at all. Inspired by all personal assistant apps and the architecture of Sentient OS · Made with ❤️ in India.
View on GitHubRead the spec
git clone https://github.com/Brownie-app/brownie cd brownie brew install cmake gperf openssl@3 ./Scripts/build-tdlib.sh ./Scripts/bundle.sh && open dist/Brownie.app
What it needs

An Apple-silicon Mac and one night.

macOS 14 or later, 8 GB of memory. A 3.7 GB model download, once. Your own API key for ChatGPT/OpenAI or Claude for the cards — or “This Mac only” for no key and no bytes out. Without any brain, Brownie still keeps your notes. If you are weighing it against Ollama, LM Studio or Apple Intelligence, we wrote those comparisons down: local AI assistants for Mac, and Apple Intelligence vs Brownie.
Is it really free?
Yes. No tiers, no trial. The only cost is your own model key if you use one, billed by your provider, and you can see every request it made.
Does it send my messages anywhere?
No. The reader runs on your GPU. The brain only ever sees short summaries, and the “What left your Mac” screen shows them byte for byte. Choose “This Mac only” and nothing leaves at all.
Will it send something on my behalf?
Never. Hands puts everything in place and stops one step short of Send, Pay or Delete. Those buttons stay yours.
Why 3 AM?
Because a house spirit works while you sleep — but 3 AM is only the default, and you can set any hour that suits your Mac. Whenever you pick, it wakes itself, reads, and goes back to sleep — and reads again during the day whenever it’s idle and plugged in.

Give it one night.

Tonight it reads. By the time you sit down tomorrow the notes are written and the morning is already sorted into a handful of cards.
Download the beta for macOS macOS 14 or later · Apple silicon · AGPL-3.0 · free, and no account
© 2026 Brownie · AGPL-3.0 · Inspired by all personal assistant apps and the architecture of Sentient OS · Made with ❤️ in India
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