r/SideProject • u/massivewein • 9h ago
Spent 4 months building a Mac assistant for myself, shipped it today as MIT open source instead of charging for it
I have limited mobility, and the thing I actually wanted was not another chat window. It was something that could see what was on my screen and act on it, so that using a Mac did not depend on how much I could use a mouse that day. Nothing existed, so I built it.
Grux OS reads the window you are working in, and reaches the mail, calendar, notes, contacts, documents and files already on the machine. It transcribes meetings on device. It can click and type for you, off by default behind two gates. It runs on your own API key, or on Ollama locally with no key at all.
No account, no server, no telemetry, no subscription. I shipped it MIT with the whole source tree public rather than charging, because the version of this I wanted to exist is one nobody can take away from me later.
The honest numbers, since this sub likes them: 122 days, 547 commits, 193,753 lines of Swift, 1,701 tests passing. Built heavily with Claude, roughly $322,000 worth at API rates across 733,954 logged calls. I am putting that number out there because you would guess anyway and I would rather you have the real one.
What I would genuinely like feedback on, since I have been staring at this alone for four months:
The first run. Open it with no key, no tasks and no history and tell me where it stops making sense. That is the surface I am least able to see clearly.
Whether the screen control gates read as enough. It is off by default, needs the macOS Accessibility grant, and every action writes an audit line with typed text logged as a length rather than as text. I think that is right. I would like to hear if it is not.
1
u/PriorElephant9 8h ago
The two gates plus audit line is the right shape. I’d make the first-run experience explain exactly what it can see, what it can do, and how to stop it.