PUBLIC PREVIEW — OCTOBER 2026

A local Mac agent that gets things done In an app, not a terminal.

Open-source models on your Mac — searches the web, reads and writes files, runs tools, and delegates real work to background workers.

A native Mac app: chat, notes, Settings, and a first-run wizard — not something you assemble from the command line. Your mother could use it; power users still get Kanban, Vault, and every toggle in Settings.

Private by default — no telemetry, no cloud account. Everything stays on disk under your control.

Swap in any model you like — we recommend a few that work great out of the box, but you're not locked in.*

Download for macOS Learn about this preview
Apple Silicon required
Runs entirely on your Mac
* Some models work out of the box; others may need extra setup.
Mugi on macOS — Modern layout with a floating conversation list, empty chat canvas, and Session Status
Native Mac app with setup wizard
Runs locally on your Mac
No data leaves your machine
No telemetry or data collection
You own and control everything
Global dashboard — ⇧⌥D

THE TWO QUESTIONS

Why run this, and what can it actually do?

Why would I run something like this?

Privacy. The model runs on your Mac. Chats, notes, files, and what Mugi has learned about you stay on disk you control — no cloud account, no telemetry, no company on the other end.

You can ask about health, money, family, or anything else you would not want a stranger to know. That includes the fact that you might not know something other people assumed you would.

If Mugi looks something up, that search goes out through a local search engine on your machine and is not tied to an account. The conversation that prompted it still does not leave.

What can it actually do?

Not a catalog of tools — the high points. Mugi is a chat window that can also do the next step on this Mac.

  • Ask what you would not type into a cloud chat. Then let it search, read a PDF, or draft a reply — without uploading the question.
  • Work with what is already here. A folder of documents, a scan, a project on disk. Point at it and ask what it says or what to do next.
  • Look it up when guessing would be expensive. Recollection is not a source. Long investigations can leave the conversation and come back when they are done.
  • Change this Mac, after you say so. Settings, files, Calendar, Mail, Notes, Finder — named apps, a confirm step, nothing silent.
  • Keep a private notebook, and a library you have actually read. Notes in Vault; documents you asked it to study, searchable later with citations. Both stay here.
  • Remember you, and wait. Over ordinary conversation it notices how you like things done. Background work shows up for you to accept, dismiss, or discuss.

Dashboard from anywhere (⇧⌥D), a quick ask from other apps, voice, and a task board for work that will take a while. The manual opens with the same two questions →

Cloud AI is fast because it's someone else's computer. Mugi is fast on yours.

Mugi runs entirely on your Mac — MLX inference, your workspace, your files. It looks and behaves like the Mac apps you already use: a main window with conversations, an Activity feed, Preferences panes, and voice input — not a developer tool disguised as chat.

Every conversation, note, and memory file lives on disk you control. Nothing is uploaded. Nothing is collected. You review, edit, export, or delete on your terms.

It maintains a working model of you (goals, commitments, recurring threads) and uses it to surface useful background work — always as reviewable proposals or Kanban tasks that wait for your go-ahead.

A real Mac app
Download, drag to Applications, launch — the wizard picks your model and you’re talking. Signed, notarized, Sparkle updates.
Your hardware, your model
Recommended MLX models ship ready to go. Point Mugi at any compatible model — though not every one works equally well on first try.
Your data stays yours
Conversations, notes, and memory files live in your workspace. No cloud sync, no telemetry, no collection.
You stay in control
Background work surfaces as reviewable proposals and Kanban tasks — nothing mutates silently. Accept, reject, or correct anything.
SINCE 0.10.1

Your Mac, at a glance

Press ⇧⌥D from anywhere — a floating panel with live vitals, your calendar, weather, markets, news, and a dedicated agent chat that already knows what’s on screen.

  • CPU, GPU, RAM, disk, and network throughput — updated live
  • Upcoming events from every calendar you’ve shared with Mugi — click to open in your default app
  • Weather hero, market tickers, and RSS news you can customize
  • “What should we do next?” — quick actions and a composer wired to the agent loop

View → Dashboard in the menu · Esc to dismiss · Same privacy as the rest of Mugi — all local.

Mugi Dashboard — vitals, calendar, weather, markets, news, and agent chat

An agent that gets things done

Under the friendly UI, a real agent loop: the model calls tools, Mugi runs them on your Mac, feeds results back, and keeps going until the job lands — or it needs you.

Files & workspace

Read, write, patch, search, and organize files in your workspace — plus git status and commits when you need them.

Web & research

Local search, save a webpage into your workspace, download & convert media, and deep multi-source research — long investigations don’t block chat.

Documents & OCR

Extract text from PDFs, OCR scans and photos, split and merge documents — without leaving the app.

Work execution

In-thread task plans, durable Kanban workers, named jobs you hire in chat, Results deliverables — serious multi-step work, not just chat replies.

Memory & knowledge

Persistent memory, a dedicated Vault notebook with hybrid search, and a Knowledge Library you browse, read, and graph — with citations when Mugi draws on what you’ve studied.

Mac & system

App control for Calendar, Notes, Mail, Finder, and apps you name — only when you ask, and only after you confirm. Global Dashboard (⇧⌥D); optional shell when you explicitly allow it.

Voice & media

Voice input and text-to-speech, plus optional on-device file transcription — talk and listen like any other Mac app with a mic button.

Extensible

Skills, plugins, and MCP servers add more tools without rebuilding the app — power without turning it into a dev project.

Risky bits (shell, web automation, background autonomy) stay behind explicit Settings toggles and your approval.

Remembers you. Waits for your OK.

Consent-first memory and background work — the parts that make Mugi more than a chat window.

Remembers your context — on your machine

Mugi builds a working model of your projects, preferences, and commitments — stored locally, never uploaded. Background processes extract signals from conversations and notes; they surface as reviewable proposals in the You pane or concrete tasks in Kanban, always waiting for your approval.

  • • Protected personality files (agent can't silently rewrite your identity)
  • • You pane with live diffs, provenance, and accept/reject
  • • Connections journal and pattern observations
  • • Checkpoints so you have a clear record of what it has learned

Act on your Mac — when you say so

Mugi can drive the Mac apps you name and approve — Calendar, Notes, Mail, Finder, and more — instead of only talking about them. Every action waits for your confirmation. Nothing runs silently.

  • • App control under Settings → Access, next to the refusal it unblocks
  • • Create calendar events and draft mail with a confirm step before anything is saved or sent
  • • Save a webpage, download & convert media into your workspace
  • • Deliverable cards in chat — results you can act on, not just a wall of text
New in 0.12.0 (July 2026). Grant Access, then confirm each action.

Vault — your private notebook

Vault has its own front door in the sidebar: write, organize, and find notes without triage-inbox chrome in the way. Hybrid search (full-text + semantic recall), a related-note inspector, wikilinks, and a recently-deleted list — still encrypted at rest, still on your Mac.

  • • Dedicated Vault workspace with projects sidebar and rich note editor
  • • Hybrid search so older notes are findable, not just the most recent
  • • Related inspector — neighbors and links beside the note you’re reading
  • • Wikilinks, voice memos, attachments, and “Discuss this” into chat
  • • On my mind stays separate — triage queue vs. library you keep
Dedicated notebook since 0.11.0. Insights use plain language (“Themes”, “Recent activity”) — not graph jargon.

Knowledge Library — study what you keep

Feed Mugi documents, codebases, or research collections. Put them in folders, search or ask This folder or Whole Library, and change a Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or PDF that’s already there — a staged copy first, then one approval.

  • • Folders you keep — add, move, reading order; originals stay on disk
  • • Unified library workspace + Related inspector and graph
  • • Search and Ask with citations; study attachments into a folder you name
  • • Honest status and trust health in Activity
See Settings → Knowledge and the in-app Library for corpus admin, progress, and search.
What’s new in 0.18.0

Mugi remembers you, and you can see it — a new You page holds what it kept, in your own words. Only what you actually said is stored; anything it merely assumed comes back as a question, not a fact. Numbers you ask Mugi to keep go to your Mac’s Keychain and never into the model. The engine picker now names each engine — mlx-serve, oMLX, Exo, External API — and says what each can load.

PUBLIC PREVIEW

This is an early public preview

Not a finished product. A serious attempt at something new, released so real people can tell us if the direction is worth pursuing.

What’s working well

  • • 0.18.0 (October 2026) — A memory you can read, correct, and forget; only what you said is kept; secrets go to the Keychain; the engine picker names your engine
  • • 0.17.0 (September 2026) — Local chat on mlx-serve with no Python model server; plain-language load errors; new Library search encoder
  • • 0.16.0 (September 2026) — Library folders; change Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or PDF where it lives; chat knows what’s open
  • • 0.15.0 (September 2026) — Sort out this Mac; look it up instead of recalling; research is not a mode
  • • 0.14.1 (September 2026) — Hire named agents with a charter and a stop-line; durable board work they actually finish
  • • 0.14.0 (September 2026) — About You in its own window; corrections that stick; “not about me”; Abilities you grant in chat
  • • 0.13.0 (August 2026) — Modern layout; About You that learns from conversation; plugin SDK + self-heal
  • • 0.12.2 (August 2026) — documents you can work with; whole-file reads; iMessage reach; clearer personal-data boundaries
  • • 0.12.0 (July 2026) — Mac app control with confirmation; save/download/convert into your workspace; a calmer cold-start launch screen
  • • 0.11.0 (July 2026) — Vault as its own notebook; Knowledge Library workspace; kernel cutover complete
  • • Global Dashboard panel — vitals, calendar, weather, markets, news, and agent chat (⇧⌥D)
  • • Native Mac experience with thoughtful surfaces and a first-run wizard
  • • Protected personality files + strong write guards on the About You store
  • • “You” pane for reviewing what the background has learned
  • • Consent-first background autonomy (Kanban, proposals, Activity)
  • • Vault hybrid search, related inspector, wikilinks, and recently deleted
  • • Knowledge graph, source repair, study-in-Knowledge attachments, trust health
  • • Steady reliability work — migrations, release gates, and fewer silent failures

What’s still early

  • • The background memory system is powerful but new — feedback still shapes it heavily
  • • Not every MLX model works out of the box — recommended models are the smoothest path
  • • Vault semantic search warms up in the background after large notebook upgrades
  • • Very large Knowledge digests remain async — progress and trust health help, but patience still matters
  • • Not every advanced flow is polished end-to-end
  • • Messaging adapters (e.g. Telegram) are not built yet — voice input, TTS, and on-device file transcription are in the app today
  • • Hands-free duplex voice conversation is not a shipped chat mode yet
  • • First public release from a solo developer — thank you for bearing with the preview
Full details: About this preview

Download Mugi

Drag to Applications, run the setup wizard, and start talking. A signed, notarized Mac app with Sparkle updates — local models, local data, your control.

Download for Apple Silicon
macOS 26.2+ • Signed & notarized • Apple Silicon required
After the first launch you’ll see the license agreement. See about this preview and the license agreement before installing.

Documentation & manual

A proper user manual written for everyday people (with power-user sections) is already available, including dedicated coverage of the Vault and Knowledge Base.

Read the full manual Releases & downloads
The manual covers installation, first launch, model setup, the personality system, Vault note-taking & graphs, Knowledge corpus management, Settings, background automation, troubleshooting, and example workflows — all running locally on your Mac.
For people who care about the details: why run Mugi, the You pane, consent-first autonomy, and core concepts.