Menu bar
Click the ghost in your menu bar to toggle the notch. Right-click for a context menu: New Chat, Agent Console, Usage & Cost, Check for Updates, Quit.
macOS 14+ · Local-first · Menu bar
A premium AI workspace
that lives in your menu bar.
Ghost routes prompts to local and hosted models, searches your private knowledge base, starts local timers, and runs verified Mac actions — all from one quiet, native notch that appears the moment you need it and vanishes when you don't.
What Ghost is
Ghost is a native SwiftUI menu-bar app for macOS that connects local models, hosted APIs, optional agent CLIs, document retrieval, timers, and verified Mac actions through one quiet notch-first surface.
It runs as an accessory — no Dock icon, no full-screen takeover. It appears with a keystroke, does the work, and steps back. Your Mac stays your Mac.
Every capability starts off. You opt into each one — clipboard, web, files, automation, screen, shell — in a six-step onboarding. Nothing is on by default. Nothing runs in the background without you asking.
01
Summon
Call it from anywhere.
Ghost lives in the menu bar and answers to global shortcuts that work across every app on your Mac. No Accessibility permission required — the hotkeys are registered through Carbon, the same system Spotlight uses.
⌥Space
Global shortcut
Press Option+Space from anywhere to open the
top-center Ghost notch. Configurable to ⌘⇧Space,
⌃Space, ⌃⌥Space, or ⌘⌥G.
⌥⇧Space
Ghost Bar
A compact quick-ask surface reuses the same routing, tool harness, deterministic parsers, and streaming pipeline for one-off questions from the active screen.
⌘K
Command palette
One hub to switch provider and effort, insert saved prompts, run quick actions, and jump to destinations — fully keyboard-driven.
Deep link
ghost://toggle opens Ghost from any app or
script. No file paths or user content accepted — the link only
ever opens, never exfiltrates.
macOS Services
Right-click any text in any app → Services → Ghost for Rewrite Professionally, Rewrite Casually, Check Grammar, or Ask Ghost for Feedback.
02
Route
One prompt.
One prompt.
Two engines.
Seven providers.
You ask naturally. Ghost scores the prompt, picks the provider, model, and engine, and decides whether a fast direct call is enough or whether the work needs a connected agent loop.
i
Direct API
The default path. Ghost calls the provider's HTTP API directly with its native tool harness — streaming, tool loops, prompt caching on Claude, retry with backoff on transient failures.
ii
Ghost Agent
For deeper work, Ghost shells out to a local CLI at
~/.local/bin/ghost or hermes, passing
provider, model, turn limits, approval mode, and toolsets.
Local
LM Studio
localhost:1234
Local
Ollama
localhost:11434
Cloud
Claude
Anthropic
Cloud
Google
Gemini
Cloud
DeepSeek
v4 reasoning
Cloud
OpenCode Go
zen/go/v1
Cloud
OpenCode Zen
free tier models
Effort modes
Quick
Balanced
Deep
Max
Four effort levels control how many turns and tokens a run may spend — from a one-shot answer to a ninety-turn deep work session.
Approval modes
Ask
Read-only tools auto-run; medium and high risk ask first.
Safe Auto
Low and medium auto-run; high risk still asks.
Auto-run
Everything classified runs — but file path scope never expands.
03
Remember
Your files,
Your files,
searchable memory.
Ghost indexes the folders you approve into a local SQLite database with FTS5 full-text search. When a prompt needs context, it retrieves cited, source-backed chunks — not vague confidence.
The index
Local SQLite · FTS5 · WAL mode
Chunks live in
~/Library/Application
Support/Ghost/rag/ghost_rag.sqlite. Max chunk 3,500 chars, 500-char overlap, sentence-aware
splitting, page numbers preserved from PDFs, section titles from
markdown headings.
30 file formats
txtmdhtmlpdfdocxepubcsvjsonrtfswiftpyjststsxjsxjavacppchmsqlxmlyamltomllog
Desktop watcher
FSEvents, always in sync
Watch a folder recursively. Startup sync, event-driven sync with
8-second debounce, periodic rescan every hour. Up to 50,000
files per pass. Skips node_modules,
build, __pycache__, venv,
and the rest.
Cited answers
Open the source behind every claim
RAG queries return chunk metadata and source paths. Ghost can open the cited file at the right spot, or reveal it in Finder. Ten RAG tools: ingest, sync, query, search, open, status, remove, reindex, clear.
04
Act
Models request.
Models request.
Ghost verifies.
The capability harness is Ghost's action layer. The model never touches the filesystem directly — it asks, Ghost normalizes the path, checks permissions, runs app-owned code, and returns a machine-readable receipt. You see what actually happened.
60+
built-in capabilities
20+
file operations
8
document formats
4
risk tiers
Files
Read, write, move, convert
List, glob, grep, read, write, create, edit, patch, move, copy, delete (trash by default), zip, reveal in Finder. Conversions between PDF, DOCX, HTML, TXT, and Markdown. Desktop, Downloads, Documents, Ghost Outputs, and the workspace are all safe output targets.
Documents
Generate real artifacts
Create Markdown, HTML, TXT, CSV, JSON, PDF, DOCX, PPTX, and XLSX — all through native macOS frameworks. If a local model returns a usable code block instead of calling a file tool, Ghost can save the artifact itself and return the real path.
Risk classification
Four tiers, fail closed
Low
Read-only: search, list, read, grep, weather, web search.
Medium
Writes, creates, calendar, reminders, file copy, app launch.
High
Patches, moves, deletes, app quit, Shortcuts, shell, index clear.
Blocked
Unknown future tools fail closed — never silently run.
Undo
Action journal
Every write, edit, move, and delete records before-and-after state. Up to 100 journal entries. If a run goes sideways, you can roll it back.
05
Native
It speaks macOS
It speaks macOS
fluently.
Ghost doesn't shell out to scripts when it doesn't have to. It talks to Calendar, Reminders, Notes, Shortcuts, Vision OCR, and Speech Recognition through the same native APIs your other apps do.
Calendar
Query events in a date range and create new ones after explicit intent. A deterministic parser turns natural language into real calendar entries.
Reminders
Turn "remind me to check the oven in 10 minutes" into a real macOS Reminder with a due date — parsed deterministically from your sentence.
Apple Notes
Create notes in specified folders, append to existing ones, and search by title and content — all through AppleScript.
Voice input
On-device SFSpeechRecognizer with a live
three-bar EQ waveform driven by RMS from the audio tap. Start,
stop, send — or press Space to toggle.
Screen capture & OCR
Capture a region and extract text with Apple Vision OCR — fast or accurate mode. Ghost hides during capture and restores afterward.
Shortcuts & timers
Run macOS Shortcuts through /usr/bin/shortcuts.
Set pomodoro and countdown timers in natural language. Active
timers take over the compact notch, and completed timers reopen
with pause, resume, add-time, restart, and dismiss controls.
06
Build
A workspace
A workspace
for deeper work.
When a compact notch isn't enough, Ghost opens into deeper work modes — agent workflows, an in-app terminal, an intent router that classifies prompts before they run, and a local model capability probe that picks the safest calling convention.
Four agent modes
Plan
Inspect & propose
Build
Edit files & run commands
Explore
Read & map codebase
Review
Inspect diffs & catch bugs
Live progress in the notch, including creating-file and using-tools states.
An in-app terminal
Open with ⌘⇧T. Slash commands \clear,
\model, \help. An activity timeline
with live streaming output.
13 intent kinds
Classifies prompts into Answer, Research, Files, Summarize, Screenshot, Clipboard, Create Artifact, Organize, Automation, Code, Debug, Review, Shell — then detects filenames, save targets, and RAG references before routing.
Picks the safest calling convention
Probes LM Studio and Ollama models for chat, JSON mode, native
tool calls, and argument accuracy — then recommends
native_tool_calls, json_action_mode,
harness_first, or answer_only.
07
Protect
Local-first
Local-first
by default.
Privacy isn't a setting you find later. It's the architecture. Ghost separates local providers, local indexes, and hosted key paths — so where your data goes is a routing choice, not an afterthought.
Keychain first
API keys live in macOS Keychain. A legacy
~/.ghost/.env file is migrated transparently and
deleted. Keys are only read when their provider is actually
called — no Keychain prompts at launch.
Only the right keys are visible
Environment scrubbing ensures the agent process only sees the selected provider's keys. DeepSeek keys are blocked when any other provider is selected. Local providers can't launch agent mode at all.
No private networks, ever
Web fetches block localhost, private IPv4/IPv6, link-local, multicast, and reserved addresses. DNS resolution checks every address. Redirects to private destinations are blocked. Cookie-free, cache-free, 5MB max.
Credentials ask twice
Even with Full Disk Access, paths like .ssh,
.gnupg, .aws,
login.keychain, .kube/config, and
.env require explicit consent — Allow Once, Always
This Session, or Deny.
Five independent switches
Web, local files, Mac automation, screen capture, and terminal inspection are each toggled independently. Disabled capabilities are removed from model tool schemas and checked again before execution. Revoking cancels active work mid-flight.
Only ghost://toggle
The only deep link Ghost accepts is one that opens Ghost. No file paths, no user content, no exfiltration vectors. Older deep link patterns are blocked.
08
Feel
Cosmic glass,
Cosmic glass,
living aurora.
Ghost's interface is built on a "Cosmic Glass" design system —
NSVisualEffectView blur with a subtle noise layer,
and an aurora background that shifts hue with the tone of your
conversation.
Codecyan
Neutralroyal violet
Emotionalchampagne
Creativeorchid
Signature animations
The notch condenses into view with scale, blur, and a soft bloom — plus a trackpad haptic. A gentle haptic marks answer completion. Welcome-back confetti fires once a day from the logo.
State-reactive send button
Hollow when the composer is empty, primary accent when ready, red stop button while a run is in flight. Answer blocks ease in from a soft blur.
Premium HUD
Tabular numerals, a latency sparkline, a token counter with rolling number animation, a reasoning depth meter, and skeleton loaders instead of spinners.
Usage & cost
Open with ⌘⇧U. Today, 7-day, and 30-day spend, a
30-day sparkline, per-model breakdown, and a recent activity log
— with cost approximated from a per-model rate table.
Radial context menu
Right-click any message for a circular menu — Copy, Regenerate, Fork, Pin, Copy ID, Delete — with champagne highlight on the active item and red on destructive. A native NSMenu sits underneath for keyboard and VoiceOver.
Flexible surfaces
The compact notch stays small for quick asks, expands for transcripts and settings, and hands deeper work to larger app surfaces when a task needs more room.
Accessibility
All motion respects prefers-reduced-motion.
VoiceOver support through native menus. Full keyboard navigation
in the command palette. Reduce Motion is honored throughout.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Bring your models, your files,
and your Mac together.
Ghost is open source, native macOS, and runs as a menu-bar app you summon with a keystroke.