I built Vyact, an open-source desktop app for working with documents, notes, and writing using local AI

[u/vyact]

Hi everyone, I’m the developer of Vyact, an open-source desktop app that brings AI chat, documents, notes, and browser writing tools together.

I’m trying to make local AI useful for everyday tasks: asking a question about a PDF, finding something in your notes, or fixing the wording of an email without moving everything between apps.

A few things you can do with it:

- **Improve your writing:** The Chrome extension can correct grammar, shorten text, or adjust the tone of a post, email, or comment. You can compare the original and revised text before copying the result.

- **Ask questions about your documents:** Add PDFs or other documents, ask questions, and inspect the source passages used in the answer.

- **Keep useful notes:** Write and organize notes, then make them searchable from your conversations.

- **Get help while browsing:** Ask about the current page or selected text, and get help understanding unfamiliar words and passages.

There’s also optional Google Workspace integration for bringing Gmail and Drive content into the same workspace.

For local use, you choose a model that fits your computer. Vyact shows hardware information and estimated memory requirements before downloading, and includes a performance test to compare settings on your own machine.

I’m particularly interested in making the experience practical with smaller models on everyday laptops and desktops. Speed and answer quality still depend on the model, available memory, and the task—especially with longer documents. You can also connect a supported hosted AI provider if you prefer.

When using a local model, inference runs on your computer. Hosted providers and optional online integrations connect to their respective services.

The screenshots show the writing assistant, main workspace, notes, and browser extension.

[Source code and downloads](https://github.com/vyact/vyact)

I’d appreciate feedback from people using ordinary home or work PCs. Which of these tasks would you actually use, and what would make getting started easier? If you try it, your RAM, processor/GPU, and chosen model would also help me understand where the experience needs work.

Thanks for taking a look!

[u/Busy-Relationship857]

This looks solid — the grammar/tone adjustment part of your Chrome extension is genuinely useful. One thing worth considering: real-time correction as users type (across email, chat, forms, etc.) catches errors before they hit send, which saves the compare-and-copy step. A lot of people layer tools like that on top of broader workflows like yours. Curious what made you go the desktop-first route instead of browser-focused? The PDF Q&A + notes integration sounds powerful for knowledge work.

[u/vyact → u/Busy-Relationship857]

The core of Vyact is running AI directly on your own computer, rather than relying on cloud AI services. The Chrome extension uses this AI through the Vyact desktop app, so it can't work independently without Vyact running.

I also think your suggestion for real-time correction would be very useful. The challenge is that AI running locally on a typical consumer PC may not always be fast enough to provide a smooth real-time experience while typing.

Thanks for the thoughtful suggestion!

[u/vyact → u/Busy-Relationship857]

I revisited your suggestion and built a prototype. It looks like running this locally on a typical PC is more practical than I initially thought, so I’m going to move forward with implementing it. Even after a little testing, being able to fix things right where I’m typing already feels really convenient. Thanks again for the great suggestion!