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https://github.com/keel-labs/keel

An AI assistant whose memory belongs to you. Local-first Mac app, plain markdown workspace, bring your own model.
https://github.com/keel-labs/keel

ai claude electron knowledge-base llm local-first macos markdown ollama openai openrouter personal-knowledge-management

Last synced: 10 days ago
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An AI assistant whose memory belongs to you. Local-first Mac app, plain markdown workspace, bring your own model.

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README 

          
# Keel



**An AI assistant whose memory belongs to you.**



Keel is a local-first desktop app for macOS and Windows that captures what matters from your conversations into plain markdown files on your disk. Swap between Claude, GPT, OpenRouter, or a local model any time — your context stays with you, not the vendor.



Open source (MIT). No telemetry. No account required. You can bring your own API key.



▶ **[Keel Walkthrough 🚀 — Watch Video](https://www.loom.com/share/29c1407fc2944b1fb5c6c1bbc953831b)**



Screenshot 2026-04-29 at 12 35 27 PM

Screenshot 2026-04-29 at 12 40 13 PM

Screenshot 2026-04-29 at 12 43 46 PM



---



## Your context is yours. The model is just a tenant.



Most AI tools invert ownership. Your notes, your history, and the context that makes an assistant useful end up trapped inside someone else's product — tied to a specific model, a specific vendor, a specific subscription. The day that model gets deprecated or that company changes direction, your context goes with it.



Keel flips that. **You own your memories. You own your context.** It all lives on your machine, in plain markdown, in a folder you control. Your projects, your captures, your wikis, your daily logs — they're files, not database rows inside someone else's cloud.



The model is the part that's interchangeable. Claude today, GPT tomorrow, a local Llama on a flight, Ollama when you want privacy — swap providers whenever you want. The assistant changes; your brain doesn't.



**One portable harness, any model you like, no lock-in.**



---



## Download



**[Download Keel for macOS](https://github.com/Keel-Labs/keel/releases/latest)** — universal DMG (Apple Silicon and Intel).



**[Download Keel for Windows](https://github.com/Keel-Labs/keel/releases/latest)** — Windows x64 installer.



### Install



**macOS**

1. Open the DMG and drag **Keel** to **Applications**.

2. Double-click Keel to launch.



**Windows**

1. Run the `Keel--win-x64.exe` installer.

2. Launch Keel from the Start menu.



On first launch, you'll need an API key from at least one provider (Anthropic, OpenAI, or OpenRouter), or [Ollama](https://ollama.com) installed locally. Keel walks you through this.



---



## What Keel does



**A local-first workspace you fully own.** Keel maintains a folder on your disk — typically `~/Keel` — made up of markdown files, project folders, daily logs, and wiki bases. Edit it in any editor. Back it up yourself. Move it between machines. Keel reads and writes it in the background as you work.



Screenshot 2026-04-29 at 12 40 27 PM



**Bring your own model.** Keel speaks to Claude, OpenAI, OpenRouter, and local models via Ollama. Swap providers in settings; fall back automatically when one is unavailable.



Screenshot 2026-04-29 at 12 40 13 PM



**Context-aware chat.** Every conversation draws on a system prompt assembled from your workspace: relevant project context, recent captures, open tasks, and search hits. Ask about a project and Keel already knows who's involved, where you left off, and what's open.



**Auto-capture.** When a chat produces something worth keeping — a decision, a fact about a project, a new task — Keel quietly saves it back into your workspace so tomorrow's conversation starts with today's progress baked in.



**Per-project knowledge bases.** Turn any project folder into a queryable wiki with `/create-kb` and `/refresh-kb`. Keel ingests markdown and PDFs, compiles them into a structured knowledge base, and keeps it in sync as files change.



Screenshot 2026-04-29 at 12 43 58 PM

Screenshot 2026-04-29 at 12 46 59 PM



**Dashboard.** A home view that surfaces your day at a glance — open tasks and reminders, recent activity, the morning brief, weather, and news — so you land somewhere useful instead of an empty chat.

Dashboard



**Tasks and reminders.** First-class to-dos backed by markdown, with due dates, projects, and time-based reminders that fire as desktop notifications.



Tasks



**Meeting transcription.** Record a meeting (or import audio) and Keel transcribes it locally with Whisper, then writes a structured summary — decisions, action items, attendees — back into the relevant project.

Screenshot 2026-04-29 at 12 45 49 PM



**Voice input.** Speak instead of type, using local Whisper or OpenAI's API.

Screenshot 2026-04-29 at 1 52 25 PM



**Daily briefs and end-of-day wraps.** Keel generates a morning brief and an EOD summary from your workspace, and "pick up where you left off" pulls yesterday's loose ends into today.

Screenshot 2026-04-29 at 12 44 46 PM

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**Scheduled jobs.** Run any prompt or workflow on a recurring schedule — daily digests, weekly reviews, custom check-ins — with results captured back into your workspace.

Scheduled Jobs



**Personalities.** Pick the voice your assistant speaks in — default, Butler, Hype Friend, Captain, or Documentary Narrator — or define your own.



Select a personality for your assistant



**Dark mode.** System-aware, with a manual override.

Dark mode



**Google Workspace and X integrations.** Sync Calendar events into context, read Google Docs into chat, export results back to Docs. Sync your X bookmarks into a searchable wiki, or publish posts directly from chat.

Screenshot 2026-04-29 at 12 52 13 PM



**Other Commands**



Screenshot 2026-04-29 at 12 45 11 PM



A full feature list and configuration details live in the in-app help.



---



## Status: this is v1



Keel is a working beta and stable enough for daily use on macOS. Windows support is newer and should be treated as beta until it has more release mileage. Some things you should know before installing:



**What works today**

- Chat with Claude, OpenAI, OpenRouter, and Ollama

- Local markdown workspace with auto-capture

- Dashboard with tasks, reminders, brief, weather, and activity

- Wiki bases with ingestion, compile, and health checks

- Tasks and reminders with desktop notifications

- Meeting recording and local transcription with structured summaries

- Daily briefs, end-of-day wraps, and "pick up where you left off"

- Scheduled jobs for recurring prompts and workflows

- Selectable assistant personalities (and custom)

- Voice input via Whisper or OpenAI

- Google Calendar, Google Docs, and X integrations

- Light and dark mode

- SQLite full-text search; optional LanceDB vector search



**What doesn't work yet**

- iPhone companion app is in TestFlight, not yet on the App Store. It captures thoughts on the go and forwards them to your Mac via Keel Cloud (an optional, opt-in service; the desktop app works fully without it). No Android app.

- No multi-Mac sync — your workspace lives on one machine at a time. (Keel Cloud is a phone→Mac capture pipe, not a workspace sync.)

- No team or sharing features

- Some integrations (X bookmark sync) require API access you'll need to provision yourself



If you can live with them, Keel is genuinely useful right now.



---



## Roadmap



Keel's roadmap lives as labeled issues so it's discoverable, commentable, and rankable in one place alongside incoming requests:



**[→ View the full roadmap](https://github.com/Keel-Labs/keel/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3Aroadmap)**



Items are stack-ranked into four tiers (filter by label):



- **[`tier-1`](https://github.com/Keel-Labs/keel/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3Atier-1)** - ship next

- **[`tier-2`](https://github.com/Keel-Labs/keel/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3Atier-2)** - high value, next few months

- **[`tier-3`](https://github.com/Keel-Labs/keel/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3Atier-3)** - bigger commitments after the above

- **[`tier-4`](https://github.com/Keel-Labs/keel/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3Atier-4)** - someday



Order is rough. The product's center is **memory and context**, not a general productivity suite.



Want something that isn't there? **[Open an issue](https://github.com/Keel-Labs/keel/issues/new)** — feature requests and bug reports both go through the same channel, so other users hitting the same thing can find the discussion.



---



## A note on this being a one-person project



Keel is built and maintained by one person. That shapes a few things you should know:



- **Issues and feature requests are read but not always answered.** I'll prioritize bugs that block usage and ignore most feature requests until I have bandwidth. 

- **Pull requests are welcome but not guaranteed to be merged.** Before investing significant time in a PR, please open an issue first to discuss the change. Small fixes (typos, obvious bugs, doc improvements) can go straight to PR.

- **Response times will vary.** Sometimes a few hours, sometimes a few weeks. If something is genuinely urgent, say so in the issue title.



If that tradeoff doesn't work, it's MIT licensed and can be forked.



---



## Install from source



If you want to build Keel yourself instead of downloading a prebuilt installer:



**Prerequisites**

- Node.js 18+ and npm

- macOS or Windows

- ~500MB disk space

- Optional: [Ollama](https://ollama.com) for local models



**Clone and run**

```bash

git clone https://github.com/Keel-Labs/keel.git

cd keel

npm install

npm run dev:electron

```



**Build a distributable**

```bash

npm run dist:mac          # macOS DMG (requires macOS)

npm run dist:win          # Windows x64 NSIS installer + ZIP (requires Windows)

npm run build:desktop     # Generic desktop build

```



See [`build/`](./build) for packaging configuration and signing entitlements.



---



## Where your data lives



Keel never sends your workspace anywhere unless you explicitly ask it to (e.g., exporting to Google Docs, or sending a message to your chosen LLM provider).



**Settings**

- macOS: `~/Library/Application Support/Keel/settings.json`

- Windows: `%APPDATA%/Keel/settings.json`

- Linux: `$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/keel/settings.json`



**Workspace** — by default at `~/Keel`, structured as plain markdown:

```

keel.md                    # Home page

tasks.md                   # Global task list

projects/{slug}/           # Per-project folders

daily-log/                 # Daily briefs and summaries

knowledge-bases/{slug}/    # Wiki bases

```



**Indexes** — SQLite at `/.config/keel.db`; optional LanceDB at `/.config/lancedb`.



**Logs** — Electron's default log directory for your OS, rotated at 10 MB. Local-only — no telemetry. To attach context to a bug report, open Settings → Help & Feedback → **Copy diagnostic info**, then paste into your GitHub issue. The blob is app version, OS, configured providers (names only, no keys), and the last 100 log lines with your home path replaced by `~`.



**Updates** — Keel checks GitHub for new releases on launch and downloads them in the background. You'll see a native notification when an update is ready; the new version installs the next time you quit and reopen Keel. No telemetry — the only thing sent off your machine is a request for the latest release manifest from `github.com`.



You can move, back up, or version-control any of this yourself.



---



## Contributing



See [CONTRIBUTING.md](./CONTRIBUTING.md) for code style, branch discipline, and PR process. See [specs/repository-architecture.md](./specs/repository-architecture.md) for the runtime map and repository layout.



Please read [the note on this being a one-person project](#a-note-on-this-being-a-one-person-project) above before opening a large PR.



---



## Privacy & legal



- [Privacy Policy](https://keel-labs.org/privacy)

- [Terms of Service](./TERMS.md)

- [Code of Conduct](./CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md)



---



## Support



- **Bugs and feature requests:** [Fider board](https://keel.fider.io) or [GitHub issues](https://github.com/Keel-Labs/keel/issues) — preferred, so other users hitting the same thing can find the discussion

- **General questions:** open a GitHub issue

- **Security disclosures:** see [SECURITY.md](SECURITY.md). Email is reserved for security reports; everything else should go through Issues so it's discoverable.



---



## Sponsor



If Keel is useful to you and you want to chip in:



- 💖 [Sponsor on GitHub](https://github.com/sponsors/medha)

- ☕ [Buy Me a Coffee](https://buymeacoffee.com/medha)



Keel is a one-person project. Every coffee covers a little more time spent shipping.



---



## License



[MIT](./LICENSE).



---



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