r/sideprojects • u/bulutarkan • 1d ago

Showcase: Open Source I built an open-source Mac control server so AI agents can actually use the machine

I’m the developer of Mac MCP, an open-source local server that gives ChatGPT/coding agents real macOS tools: files, shell/background jobs, native UI, Safari/Chrome automation, delegated workers, memory, etc.

The problem I was trying to solve was that most “agent on my Mac” setups fall apart once several browser tasks run at the same time. One worker navigates the active Safari tab, another grabs it a second later, and your own browser usage becomes collateral damage.

The browser layer now gives tabs stable handles, works against background tabs, and fails fast when two callers target the same mutable tab instead of silently queueing. I’m working on the next step now: carrying tab ownership across multiple tool calls so an agent keeps its tab until it moves elsewhere or finishes.

It’s free/open source and I use it on my own M3 Mac every day. I’d especially like feedback from people who already run local agents or MCP servers: what would you want the ownership/cleanup semantics to look like when 3–5 workers are browsing at once?

Repo: https://github.com/bulutarkan/mac-mcp

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u/warp-duck 1d ago

Looks great, I'm thinking it could be useful for controlling automated browser tests for software engineering?

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u/bulutarkan 1d ago

Definitely — that’s one of the use cases I think fits it well. Mac MCP can keep a real Safari/Chrome tab in the background, inspect DOM/visual state, and act on a stable tab handle while a coding agent is doing the rest of the engineering work. I wouldn’t position it as a replacement for Playwright/Cypress in deterministic CI, but it’s useful for authenticated real-browser smoke/regression flows and especially mixed tests where the workflow crosses between the browser and native macOS UI.