Dottie Desktop is an AI agent that controls your Mac through voice and text. It doesn't just answer questions — it takes actions. File management, app control, system automation, and developer workflows, all through natural conversation.

Who Built Dottie

Dottie is built by Steve Derico, a longtime macOS and iOS developer. Before Dottie, Steve shipped dozens of native Apple-platform apps through Bixby Apps and worked on AI tooling and developer infrastructure. Dottie is the result of wanting an AI that could actually do things on a Mac, not just talk about them.

Built for Privacy

Dottie supports local models through Ollama and MLX, so your conversations and data never leave your machine. For users who want more capability, cloud providers like xAI (Grok), OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cerebras are available too. You choose the tradeoff.

Sandboxed Security

Every tool Dottie uses runs inside a sandbox with domain-gated network access, read-only filesystem defaults, and configurable security presets. These boundaries are enforced at the system level, not the prompt level.

Open Source Core

Dottie's CLI engine, Dotbot, is fully open source. Inspect the code, contribute, or build your own tools on top of it. We believe AI agents should be transparent and auditable.

Editorial Standards

Every post on this blog is written or reviewed by someone who has used the tools being discussed. Comparisons are based on hands-on testing, not feature lists. Pricing and capability claims include citations. Posts are updated when the underlying products change — see the "Last updated" date on each post.

Download Dottie Desktop at dottie.ai.