# Dottie Desktop

> AI voice assistant for macOS that executes actions on your Mac through natural conversation.

## What Dottie Does

Dottie Desktop is a native macOS AI agent. It controls your Mac through voice and text — sending emails, managing calendar events, searching files, controlling apps, and automating system tasks. It does not just answer questions; it takes actions using 134 built-in system tools.

## Key Capabilities

- 134 built-in system tools: email, iMessage, calendar, notes, reminders, music, photos, FaceTime, Safari tabs, maps, weather, stocks, live sports, app control, file management, image generation
- Voice control: wake word ("Hey Dottie"), hold-to-dictate (Fn key), barge-in interruption, floating overlay with live transcription
- Text-to-speech via MLX Kokoro with premium AI voices
- Screen reading via OCR and visual analysis
- 3,800+ local models from HuggingFace via Ollama and MLX
- Cloud providers: xAI (Grok), OpenAI, Anthropic, Cerebras — bring your own API keys
- Shared memory layer across all apps, user-controlled
- Built-in App Store with curated AI apps
- 15 granular permissions, all default off

## Who It's For

- Mac users who want a voice-controlled AI assistant that takes actions, not just answers questions
- Privacy-conscious users who want local-first AI with no data leaving their machine
- Developers who want an open-source, extensible AI agent platform
- Power users automating repetitive macOS workflows (email triage, scheduling, file management)

## Architecture

- Native macOS app, requires macOS 15.4+ on Apple Silicon
- Local-first: conversations and data stay on-device when using local models
- Sandboxed security with domain-gated network access, read-only filesystem defaults, and configurable security presets enforced at the system level
- Open-source CLI engine: Dotbot (github.com/stevederico/dotbot)
- Local Agent API on 127.0.0.1:1317 with SSE streaming, tool calling, and personal data access
- Authentication via local Bearer token stored at ~/.dottie/agent_token

## Pricing

Free. No subscription. No account required. Local models run completely free on-device. Cloud providers use your own API keys with no markup.

## Links

- Website: https://www.dottie.ai
- Download: https://github.com/stevederico/dottie-desktop-releases/releases/latest/download/Dottie.zip
- Blog: https://www.dottie.ai/blog/
- API Documentation: https://docs.dottie.ai/llms.txt
- Source (CLI engine): https://github.com/stevederico/dotbot
- Releases: https://github.com/stevederico/dottie-desktop-releases
- About: https://www.dottie.ai/blog/about/