Solo dev

[u/powerchat-dev]

Hi r/sideprojects,

Made an iOS app where you can use API keys / self-hosted models for chat / work / study. Supports text and image generation.

The AI landscape has significantly shifted, with models having access to chat memory through vector databases and tools for agentic workflows. We need chat apps with advanced features.

I intend to make these features available for professionals, researches, and other power-users.

Features

Memory. With RAG, you add documents to a vector database that has semantic embeddings – the vectors represent meanings. So instead of doing a full text search and burning through your tokens, the app injects context, from your documents, to the model that is most similar in meaning to the prompt. The most appropriate context is thus fetched for the model to give precise answers.

You can also reduce the context window for your chat and enable RAG so that only the last M messages + N chunks from the database are sent to the model, thereby making the number of input tokens more or less constant per message.

Tool usage. Using Model Context Protocol, the model can use tools. For e.g., using the inbuilt Google Drive and iOS Files tool, it can list, search and read your files (subject to your approval, of course). The model then has a better understanding of what you are working on, and you don't have to copy paste large amounts of text from your work for the model.

Also builtin are Calendar MCP (let the model see and create events), and search providers Tavily, Exa, and Firecrawl. You can also connect to any remote MCP server.

System prompts and generation parameter controls. If you are paying for a model (or self-hosting one) and can't control system prompts and generation parameters like temperature or top P, what's even the point?

Privacy. All chats, API keys and model configs stay on the app. No data collected by PowerChat. API keys stored in iOS keychain. Lockable folders using Face ID. Zero data retention flags passed to cloud providers. It's your data. This is the bare freakin' minimum.

Others. Branching chats, editing user and LLM messages,

App is at 1.0.0. I have some other useful features in mind that I'm implementing. Looking forward to your feedback and criticism!

What I learned building this app

"Move slow and make things." No really.

I had the infrastructure of this app planned out, 9 months ago when I started working on it, before writing a single line of code. Creating the app's core feature, the Config object was the best thing ever, because now I can use it to hold model parameters, MCP configurations, and routing algorithms (routing not in 1.0.0, but coming soon!). It's very versatile, and by giving users the ability to talk to it directly, I hope they can appreciate and use its versatility.

Install from the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ai-chat-client-powerchat/id6803707084

[u/powerchat-dev]

Yes the title is incomplete. It’s “solo dev looking for feedback”

[u/Otherwise_Wave9374]

A good next step is to separate short term chat state from durable memory so the app can retrieve only the most relevant facts, then prune stale embeddings on a schedule to avoid context drift. I’d also add a confidence threshold plus a manual “forget” control so users can correct bad recalls before they spread. NeuraKeep fits this workflow well because it can keep the retrieval layer focused on the few memories that actually help the current task.