Osaurus

Osaurus is a free, open-source AI app, MIT licensed. It runs natively on your own computer (Mac, with Windows in public beta), works with local and cloud models, and keeps your memory, tools, and agents on your machine.

How it started

Osaurus began with a dinosaur.

Before Osaurus, we built Dinoki, a pixel-art AI companion that lived on your Mac desktop. It started as a personal project: an AI that felt like a character you live with, instead of a chat window you visit. People loved it.

Then we launched Dinoki Premium and saw the problem. People paid twice: once for the app, and again for the model behind it. Anyone who wanted to build an AI product had to run a billing company and an infrastructure company first. The model providers took the margin, and everyone else paid for it.

The more we looked, the more it was split apart. Different providers, different tools, different bills. Meanwhile, Apple Silicon could already run capable models locally, and almost no software used it.

So we built the missing piece: a native, open-source app where you can swap models, and your context, memory, tools, and agents stay yours. That is Osaurus.

What we believe

Inference is a commodity. Your context is not. Models improve every month, and you can swap them in and out. What lasts is everything around the model: the memory of your work, the tools your agents use, the skills they learn, and the identity they carry. That should not live on someone else's server. It should be yours.

Private by default. With a local model, your prompts, files, and outputs stay on your computer, and you do not need an account. When a task needs a frontier cloud model, you decide what leaves your machine.

Local first does not mean local only. Osaurus runs models itself and connects to local runtimes like Ollama and LM Studio, and to cloud providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, and Venice AI. One memory works across all of them. The cloud is a choice, and you make it.

Free and open. Osaurus is MIT licensed and built in public. Read the code, fork it, and ship with it. Software this close to your files and your identity has to be open to inspection. "Trust us" is not a security model.

Built for your computer. On the Mac, Osaurus is written in Swift for Apple Silicon, with a model runtime we maintain in the open. On Windows, now in public beta, it is a native Windows app. Neither is a web page wrapped in an app.

What is a harness?

A model on its own predicts text. A harness is everything that makes a model useful: the memory that lasts between sessions, the tools it can call, the files it can read, the sandbox it runs code in, the identity it carries, and the schedule it works on. It is the difference between chatting with an AI and having one that does the work.

Agents are what the harness makes possible. An agent can take on a task by itself: watch a folder and organize what lands in it, run a research job overnight, transcribe and summarize your meetings, run code in an isolated sandbox, or check in on a schedule you set. In Osaurus, agents run in the background on your machine, with your models, under your rules.

So bring any model, local or cloud. The harness, and everything it learns about how you work, stays with you.

Who is Osaurus for?

People who want AI that works for them without handing over their files, history, and accounts to get it.

Today that includes developers automating their workflows, writers and researchers who want private assistants with real memory, tinkerers running open models on their own hardware, and privacy-conscious professionals who cannot send client data to third-party servers. You do not need to be an engineer. If you can drag a folder into a window, you can put an agent to work.

Where we are going

The personal computer made a promise it has not kept yet: a machine that is yours, that knows your work, and that acts on your behalf. AI can keep that promise, but only if it runs on your computer, under your control, with an identity you own.

Our roadmap moves in that direction. Companions bring characters into Osaurus as personal AI you shape over time. Every agent already carries its own cryptographic identity and can communicate over end-to-end encrypted channels. Next, your agents work with other agents and handle transactions on your behalf, all from hardware you own.

That is what we mean by a personal computer. Not a window into someone else's AI. Yours.

The company

Osaurus, Inc. is a Delaware corporation based in California. Osaurus has been covered by TechCrunch, reached #2 Product of the Day on Product Hunt, and has more press coverage.

We build in public. Follow the work on GitHub, join the community on Discord, or get in touch.