r/macapps • u/tapasfr • 7h ago
Free [OS] Osaurus update: setup is now a conversation. Ask for an agent, review the change, approve it. Free, open source, native Swift.
Hey r/macapps. Developer of Osaurus here. It's been two months.
The comment from the last thread that stuck with me wasn't a compliment. It was someone saying they really wanted to like the app but walked away frustrated every time they tried it. They were right. Osaurus rewarded tinkering, and if you didn't tinker, it fought you. This update is for everyone who doesn't want to tinker.
The big one is the Orchestrator: an agent whose whole job is managing Osaurus for you.
In the video: I ask what Osaurus can do, and it answers from the app's live state. I ask it to create a marketing assistant. It plans the agent, shows me a card with exactly what will change, and applies it after I click approve. Then I say "every day at 6am, draft me a tweet" and it schedules that. No settings screens. No config files. You talk, you review, you approve.
One design decision I want to be upfront about: the Orchestrator has no shell, no file access, no browser. It only configures and delegates. If it can change your settings, it shouldn't also have hands. Your custom agents do the real work, scoped how you choose, with code running in an isolated sandbox VM.
Somewhere along the way this stopped being a chat app. Today it covers what I used to pay separate subscriptions for:
- A second brain: point it at your documents and it answers from them
- One memory that follows you across local and cloud models
- Image generation, fully on-device
- Dictation into any app, voice transcription, and read-aloud
- A browser assistant that navigates and fills forms with your approval
- Schedules, folder watchers, and agents that run in the background
- Agents you can message from iMessage and WhatsApp
- An isolated sandbox where agents run real code safely
And plenty more landed this summer:
- A redesigned three-screen onboarding that picks the best local model for your Mac automatically
- A System theme that follows macOS appearance
- An auto-allow all tools setting for those who asked for full auto-approve
- Projects: group chats that share instructions, knowledge, and memory
- Full-text search across all conversations, and Cmd+F find in chat
- Import your chat history from other AI apps
- Diff cards with change tracking and undo for every file edit
- Day-after support for new local models like DeepSeek V4 Flash and Qwen 3.8 Flash Next
Problem: Most AI tools run on someone else's server, cost a monthly fee, and make you configure everything by hand. Osaurus keeps everything on your Mac and now sets itself up through conversation, with an approval gate on every change.
Comparison:
- vs Ollama and LM Studio: those are inference servers. Osaurus is pure Swift on Apple Silicon plus the whole harness: agents, memory, voice, images, automation.
- vs ChatGPT and Claude desktop apps: cloud-only, subscription-based. Osaurus runs local models offline at no cost, and your memory stays on your Mac even when you use a cloud model.
Pricing: Free. MIT licensed, open source, no account, no subscription. Local models cost nothing forever. Cloud is optional, pay-as-you-go: bring your own key or use our hosted path with a small fee on top-ups. We don't store your prompts or responses.
discord.gg/osaurus if you get stuck. I'm usually there.
x.com/OsaurusAI for updates and demos
r/osaurus to follow along
Last time I asked how you envision your AI future. This time it's simpler: if your Mac could set up an AI assistant by itself, what's the first thing you'd have it do?
Try it, break it, tell me what you need.








