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Hi.
I'd like to introduce you to Basil.
It's a project I've been working on and working with for over a year.
It's an AI assistant for your Mac. You press a hotkey or say "Hey Basil" and tell it what you need. It sees what you're working on, understands the context, and handles it.
I wanted to create something that was a joy to use. Something that made AI feel magical, but also like a seamless extension of my own capabilties. Something that fit into my workflow and was always there when I needed it, without being intrusive.
When I started building this, it was called "Jarvish", because I was genuinely trying to build Jarvis. And because I've always wanted a cease and desist from Disney.
That was a year ago. Since then it's grown into something much bigger than what I originally had in mind.
It does voice- (or keyboard-) initiated agentic workflows from anywhere, context-aware content generation, live meeting transcription, direct application interaction, file management, shell commands, AppleScript automation. And it can do pretty much everything using local models.
It also does regular ol' transcription, if you want to be vanilla.
It really seems like AI has lost its shine for a lot of people. Every app tries to cram a button into every surface whether you asked for it or not (seriously, fuck you Copilot. I downgraded to an older version of word just so I don't have your obnoxious icon every time I start a new line).
It feels less like a tool and more like a pop-up ad you can't close.
I designed Basil to always be one keystroke away, but never shows up uninvited. That distinction was really important to me.
And the more you use it, the more it has to work with. It remembers your conversations, tracks what you've been working on, and can learn your writing style so that what it creates sounds like you, not a robot.
It started as a local-first project on purpose. I figured if the core capabilities worked without an internet connection, then cloud models would only make it better. Everything runs on your Mac, your data stays on your machine. If you want to use cloud models, you can use Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, or any custom endpoint you want. Bring your own API keys, bring your own models. But nothing leaves your computer unless you decide it should.
The current version is free. No email, no credit card, no trial period. Just download it. I've spent a year building this mostly in isolation, and at this point, what I want more than anything is for people to use it.
I use it every day. It saves me hours. It's genuinely the most useful thing on my computer. But there has never been a moment where it felt *done*, and I'm realizing that moment is probably never going to come. I've learned more about architecture and engineering building this than I did in the five years before it, and I'm really proud of where it is. If it's as useful to you as it is to me, that's enough for now.
So here it is. I made a thing, and I think it's pretty cool.
Take a look. See if it's for you.
You can see it doing a bunch of things here - basil.ac
And you can download it directly here - basil.ac/download
P.S. I hope you can feel how much care has gone into this if you use it. Every part of it has been intentionally crafted; down to the window drop shadows, which are custom because the native ones didn't feel quite right.
P.P.S. Here it is cleaning up my downloads folder in less than 4 minutes (for me. for you it's only about 45 seconds). If I'm being honest, I probably would have just never gotten around to it otherwise.
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