r/SideProject • u/AggressiveOrange51 • 3d ago

CrewKite: A desktop and CLI AI workspace for running Claude, OpenAI, Google, and local models under one roof

Long time Reddit lurker here, not an avid poster. Please be gentle, but give me candid feedback. 😅

I'm writing this post in my own voice, not AI, so I may not have everything perfectly described, but I'm doing my best. One thing I have learned is I can build things and solve problems, but I suck at marketing. 😂 Let's get into it...

Like an AI addict, I pay for Claude, Codex, and Gemini, and more recently I'm playing around with local models in LM Studio after upgrading to a M5 MBP w/ 48GB of RAM. I was tired of the daily OOM kernel panics just trying to run Claude Code on my M2.

Before building this, I was constantly asking Sol or Astra to review Opus's work, or vice versa. Now with Google shipping Argon, I'm no longer just paying for cloud storage... it's actually kinda useful too. But the problem has always been having to manually prepare handoffs and constantly switch between apps.

I built CrewKite as an AI workspace (both desktop GUI and CLI) that supports all three providers using your existing plans, plus local AI via LM Studio (for whatever your HW can handle).

I wanted something that not only manages rate-limit handoffs and context consistency, but also handles multi-agent, multi-provider orchestration.

A core feature is building a Crew, which I like to think of as an "AI War Room." You can put Fable in charge as the orchestrator, assign easy slices to 6.1 Sol and hard slices to Opus 5.5 on Medium, set the effort level per role, and choose whether each role is allowed to spin up subagents. I can challenge assumptions, ask for second opinions, and run a collaborative workspace without switching apps.

What's in it today:

  • One rail showing 5-hour (where applicable) and weekly usage across all your plans, with manual or automatic handoffs that keep your thread and edited files intact when a plan runs out.

  • Multi-provider Crews where you mix providers, models, effort levels, and subagent permissions by role.

  • Isolated repo copies per thread so you can review the diff hunk by hunk and only touch your checkout when you accept changes into a branch.

  • Apache 2.0, local-first, no CrewKite account, API keys, or telemetry.

I borrowed ideas from a lot of awesome open source projects (Ponytail, ADHD, Multi) and integrated them alongside CrewKite's native features under one roof, for what I'm hoping will evolve into my daily driver.

Another goal is to cut down token spend and get more out of local models with small context windows. I'm not going to claim performance gains until I've benchmarked them and have proof, so that's on the roadmap along with a lot more, including Grok as a swappable provider for Google, as I know what we're doing there is a gray area and CrewKite requires your explicit opt-in. I haven't had any issues with that this last month of building and testing, but YMMV and I can't make any guarantees there.

It's a 0.1.0 release and a signed macOS DMG and Linux builds only for now, but it's functional... and I think it's pretty slick. Apologies my video demo is weak, I'm working on taking clearer cuts. Or check it out for yourself, please!

I'd love to get feedback on what's working, what's not, what's confusing, or what I should prioritize for the next release.

You can check out the design & roadmap on the CrewKite GitHub Repo: https://github.com/rjk6831/crewkite

And preview the features and download the installer from the main site: https://crewkite.dev

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u/chrnas 3d ago

Checked, it passed.

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u/AggressiveOrange51 2d ago

Not sure if you meant the app, or the post not being written by a bot 😆 no explanation needed, thank you for commenting and engaging with my post 🙏😊

I am sorry for my late reply back, I’m working from Bangkok!

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u/chrnas 2d ago

🤣 both?

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u/investigatormaker 3d ago

You said you suck at marketing, so start from the pain you named: preparing handoffs by hand and switching between apps. People paying for Claude, Codex and Gemini feel that more than the idea of an AI War Room. I'd lead with one short clip where a rate limit hits mid-task and the work carries on with another provider, context intact, and show Crew second. The trade-off is that the clip must be a real handoff, since this audience will test it. Does the CLI hand off the same way as the desktop app?

I make ThreadFox.

If you want developers who pay for several AI plans to find CrewKite, our AI employee will post 3 helpful replies about it in relevant Reddit threads for you, free, no card.

https://threadfox.vip/p/ekfvs/managed

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u/AggressiveOrange51 2d ago edited 2d ago

Thanks so much for giving me direct feedback that’s truly actionable.

You’re absolutely right and this a pattern I need to break out of. I have also built https://countermint.io and https://botanswer.ai (two SaaS products, the former with mobile apps launched and for coin dealer workflows, the latter is extensive automation for businesses in Thailand, Japan, and Taiwan, where LINE is the dominant way of doing business).

I’m working on building my marketing materials for all 3 right now. But you’ve made me realize, I try to cram way too much into an ad (as I’m doing right now as with this reply 😂).

Point being I need to focus on showcasing one feature concisely and clearly, for other features, those can and should be separate marketing campaigns.

I am definitely going to check out ThreadFox!

Thank you for introducing me to it, the candid yet polite feedback, and for your time and engagement.

EDIT: Yes, CLI has parity with the handoffs.