[HN Gopher] Show HN: Onit - Source-available ChatGPT Desktop wit...
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Show HN: Onit - Source-available ChatGPT Desktop with local mode,
Claude, Gemini
Hey Hackernews- it's Tim Lenardo and I'm launching v1 of Onit
today! Onit is ChatGPT Desktop, but with local mode and support
for other model providers (Anthropic, GoogleAI, etc). It's also
like Cursor Chat, but everywhere on your computer - not just in
your IDE! Onit is open-source! You can download a pre-built
version from our website: www.getonit.ai Or build directly from
the source code: https://github.com/synth-inc/onit We built this
because we believe: Universal Access: AI assistants should be
accessible from anywhere on my computer, not just in the browser or
in specific apps Provider Freedom: Consumers should have the choice
between providers (anthropic, openAI, etc.) not be locked into a
single one (ChatGPT desktop only has OpenAI models) Local first: AI
is more useful with access to your data. But that doesn't count for
much if you have to upload personal files to an untrusted server.
Onit will always provide options for local processing. No personal
data leaves your computer without approval Customizability: Onit is
your assistant. You should be able to configure it to your liking
Extensibility: Onit should allow the community to build and share
extensions, making it more useful for everyone. The features for
V1 include: Local mode - chat with any model running locally on
Ollama! No internet connection required Multi-provider support -
Top models for OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and GoogleAI File upload -
add images or files for context (bonus: Drag & drop works too!)
History - revisit prior chats through the history view or with a
simple up/down arrow shortcut Customizable Shortcut - you pick your
hotkey to launch the chat window. (Command+zero by default)
Anticipated questions: What data are you collecting? Onit V1 does
not have a server. Local requests are handled locally, and remote
requests are sent to model providers directly from the client. We
collect crash reports through Firebase and a single "chat sent"
event through PostHog analytics. We don't store your prompts or
responses. How to does Onit support local mode? For use local
mode, run Ollama. You can get Ollama here: https://ollama.com/ Onit
gets a list of your local models through Ollama's API. Which
models do you support? For remote models, Onit V1 supports
Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI and GoogleAI. Default models include (o1,
o1-mini, GPT-4o, Claude3.5 Sonnet, Claude3.5 Haiku, Gemini 2.0,
Grok 2, Grok 2 Vision). For local mode, Onit supports any models
you can run locally on Ollama! What license is Onit under? We're
releasing V1 available on a Creative Commons Non-Commercial
license. We believe the transparency of open-source is critical. We
also want to make sure individuals can customize Onit to their
needs (please submit PRs!). However, we don't want people to sell
the code as their own. Where is the monetization? We're not
monetizing V1. In the future we may add paid premium features.
Local chat will- of course- always remain free. If you disagree
with a monetized feature, you can always build from source! Why
not Linux or Windows? Gotta start somewhere! If the reception is
positive, we'll work hard to add further support. Who are we? We
are Synth, Inc, a small team of developers in San Francisco
building at the frontier of AI progress. Other projects include
Checkbin (www.checkbin.dev) and Alias (deprecated - www.alias.inc).
We'd love to hear from you! Feel free to reach out at
contact@getonit dot ai. Future roadmap includes: Autocontext -
automatically pull context from computer, rather than having to
repeatedly upload. Local-RAG - let users index and create context
from their files without uploading anything. Local-typeahead - i.e.
Cursor Tab but for everywhere Additional support - add
Linux/Windows, Mistral/Deepseek etc etc. (maybe) Bundle Ollama to
avoid double-download And lot's more!
Author : telenardo
Score : 148 points
Date : 2025-01-24 22:15 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| jjmaxwell4 wrote:
| The idea of a universal AI assistant across the desktop is cool.
| Like the emphasis on local processing and provider choice.
|
| I have tried out V1 and while it's a bit barebones, the planned
| features like 'Autocontext' and 'Local-RAG' sound promising.
| Devil's in the implementation details though.
| emacsen wrote:
| I was so so excited to read this, then I saw the headline is
| deceptive. It's not Open Source; it uses a Creative Common "Non-
| Commercial" license.
|
| CC licenses are not meant for software. They explicitly say so on
| their FAQ: https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-
| creative-comm...
|
| And non-commercial licenses are not Open Source, period. This has
| been well established since the 1990s, both by the FSF and the
| OSI.
|
| It's such a promising piece of software, but deceptive
| advertising is a bad way to start off a relationship of any sort.
| elashri wrote:
| I would like to add that this is probably not deceptive
| advertising. At least not intentional deceptive as many people
| including me didn't know that CC licenses are not meant for
| software and is not considered open source. I don't know if it
| is common misunderstanding or not but I think there is strong
| case to say that some people intuitively would think so.
| telenardo wrote:
| Yes, that's right. This was definitely not intentional and we
| are very open to changing it to something more appropriate!
| freeone3000 wrote:
| I think the license choice is great. It allows
| noncommercial use, modification, and redistribution. It's
| not "open source" according to the champions of the term
| (since it violates the use-for-any-purpose requirement) but
| I'm a huge fan of this license and license several of my
| projects CC-NC-BY where AGPL would be too heavy-handed.
| josephernest wrote:
| I think your choice is very appropriate.
|
| And it is open source.
|
| Probably not OSI-open source or FSF-open source but it is
| open source, period.
| emacsen wrote:
| "It's not recognized as Open Source by the Open Source
| body, and doesn't meet the criteria of Free/Open Source
| Software, but is Open Source" is a bit like saying "I
| used GMO and petroleum based pesticides, but my produce
| is all organic."
| MacsHeadroom wrote:
| BSD or MIT license would be nice.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| AGPL would be better
| gus_massa wrote:
| Amazon and other cloud providers avoid AGPL, so I think
| it's closer to the intentions of the OP.
| emacsen wrote:
| It might not be, but I can't understand how someone who has
| written such advanced software, and includes a monetization
| plan, and then posts about it on HN also doesn't take the
| time to choose a license.
|
| Even if they didn't know CC wasn't suitable for software,
| everyone knows that non-commercial isn't Open Source.
|
| I didn't dig into the software, but I wonder if the licenses
| for the dependencies allow this either, eg if any are GPL or
| similar.
| josephernest wrote:
| > CC wasn't suitable for software
|
| This is wrong. CC is perfectly fine for software in some
| cases, such as here.
|
| Ok, CC is not tailored specifically for software, thus the
| general advice "you should use something else" but I do not
| see why CC would not be suitable here to achieve OP's
| goals.
|
| Can someone explain?
| emacsen wrote:
| Software licenses, especially the more "advanced"
| licences such as the GPL, MPL, and others include very
| specific language around the issue of what is use, what
| is distribution, what is is connecting to, derived works,
| and importantly, around patents.
|
| The CC licenses do an amazing job when it comes to
| artistic work such as books, movies, music, etc. but you
| don't have the same issues there, and that's why even CC
| says that they don't recommend using them for software.
| bmelton wrote:
| Creative Commons' FAQ addresses this
| Unlike software-specific licenses, CC licenses do
| not contain specific terms about the distribution
| of source code, which is often important to ensuring
| the free reuse and modifiability of software.
| Many software licenses also address patent rights,
| which are important to software but may not be
| applicable to other copyrightable works. Additionally,
| our licenses are currently not compatible with the
| major software licenses, so it would be difficult to
| integrate CC-licensed work with other free software.
| Existing software licenses were designed specifically
| for use with software and offer a similar set of
| rights to the Creative Commons licenses.
| josephernest wrote:
| I disagree.
|
| Ok, a non-commercial Creative Common license is not "OSI-open
| source" or "FSF-open source", but it is technically "open
| source". The source is open.
|
| The open source societal movement is much broader than the
| narrow definition given by OSI or FSF.
|
| OP, your tool is perfectly fine with a non-commercial creative
| common license. The fact that CC licenses are not specific for
| software does not imply it is a bad choice for software.
|
| Here I find it is a very appropriate license for OP's needs :
| he wants to open the source code, but prevent that someone else
| takes it and makes money with it under another name. This is
| totally fine.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Then say source available, not open source, because the
| latter connotes the freedoms as mentioned in the OSI
| definition, for most people who use that phrase.
| drdaeman wrote:
| That's because "open source" is a bad name, since it only
| focuses on source code availability rather than three other
| essential freedoms. "Free/libre software" always made more
| sense, but "open source" got significantly more popular.
| catapart wrote:
| As someone developing CC0-licensed software, this had me a bit
| shook, so let me highlight that your link does clarify that CC0
| licenses are fine for software and are entirely separate from
| other CC licenses.
|
| Relevant sub-link (from OP's link):
| https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0_FAQ#May_I_apply_CC...
| Jedd wrote:
| > And non-commercial licenses are not Open Source, period. This
| has been well established since the 1990s, both by the FSF and
| the OSI.
|
| That may be a bit misleading - the Free Software Foundation has
| long held _strong opinions_ about the phrase 'open source'.[0]
|
| IIRC 'open source' became formalised by the OSI around 1998 -
| and despite the _stated intent_ to clarify things where
| arguably no clarification was needed (a lot of people felt it
| was not too onerous to explain the beer and speech, libre and
| gratis, concepts to novices) it continues to reduce clarity.
| Viz.
|
| [0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-
| point....*
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've replaced open-source with source-available in the
| title for now, so hopefully the discussion can get back on
| topic.
| airstrike wrote:
| This is all a bit tangential, and I understand the gif is meant
| to be illustrative, but I think it reinforces the view that
| things like "summarize document" are good prompts.
|
| People really need to learn to be more detailed when telling AI
| assistants what to do because they benefit from context. Saying
| just "summarize document" or "what does this code do" with no
| context is going to lead to subpar results. It would be like
| stopping a random person on the street and asking just that one
| question. Also why paste a screenshot of code instead of the
| actual code??
|
| Finally your gif is 4MB which is therefore very slow to load,
| especially for such a short recording. Consider using a tool life
| gifski to reduce the size to a more appropriate size while
| maintaining quality. The grainy background might be hurting more
| than helping, unless that's a byproduct of dithering from the
| conversion from video to gif
| catapart wrote:
| Looks like a sharp utility!
|
| Any plans to expand into non-text generation? My roadblocks with
| Jan (similar, as far as I can see?), were that I couldn't run any
| of the image generation or 3D model generation releases, so I'd
| be very interested in something local that was equipped for
| media/file output, rather than just text output.
| Jarwain wrote:
| Love it! I'm curious about whether open router support is on the
| road map to really allow people to use any option
| deeviant wrote:
| What value does this provide over using Ollama and one of the
| many already available cross-platform local frontends available
| for it?
| ummmzokbro wrote:
| Such as:
|
| - GPT4all - Lmstudio - LocalAI - Jan - KoboldAI - SillyTavern -
| Oobabooga - ComfyUI (now supports text) - Llama.cpp - Ollama
|
| Many of which have very large capabilities, more permissive
| licenses and are very actively maintained.
|
| And then there is also OpenwebUI which seems to be
| consolidating this space rapidly with a huge feature set and
| ecosystem of tools and models. And 'Artifacts' style IDE coming
| shortly.
| CGamesPlay wrote:
| Basic polish things you might want to fix up quickly: 1) The site
| in the github repo description is a broken link 2) The
| description itself says "iOS client" which I don't understand at
| all and 3) The actual webpage's title is "My Framer Site".
| telenardo wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback! Fixed these - though the site title
| seems to be cached...
| evilduck wrote:
| I can't connect to any remote models without allowing the app to
| connect to the domain "syntheticco.blob.core.windows.net".
| Blocking this prevents any API connection from functioning. Why
| are you sending something to Microsoft's blob storage?
| telenardo wrote:
| We pull the list of available models from that URL! Not sending
| anything, just fetching so we can display an up-to-date list of
| models.
|
| This the URL that we fetch:
| https://syntheticco.blob.core.windows.net/onit/models.json
| evilduck wrote:
| Fair enough, thanks for the fast reply!
| acka wrote:
| > We built this because we believe: Universal Access: AI
| assistants should be accessible from anywhere on my computer, not
| just in the browser or in specific apps.
|
| I find this somewhat ironic, given that the software only
| supports Apple computers. It would have been nice for OP to
| mention this fact upfront in the announcement, so as not to get
| non-Apple users' expectations up too soon.
| telenardo wrote:
| Addressed towards the end of the post:
|
| "Why not Linux or Windows? Gotta start somewhere! If the
| reception is positive, we'll work hard to add further support."
|
| As you can see from the commit log, we have 3 people working on
| this. So we're quite limited in what we can take on. That said,
| our belief holds and we'd love to support Linux and Windows.
|
| I had "MacOS" in my original title, but HN limits titles to 80
| characters!
| scottyeager wrote:
| It would be nice if the README made it clear toward the top
| that this is Mac software. The screenshot and mention of
| Xcode give that vibe of course, but I kept reading anyway and
| felt a bit bummed to only confirm at the end.
|
| Looks like a cook project and wishing y'all the best. Let us
| know if and when the Linux support drops :)
| CT4u8798 wrote:
| You might be interested in a properly cross-platform version of
| this type of thing that's also on the front page just now:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42789323
| xmly wrote:
| License is disappointed. Plan to create one in Apache
| verdverm wrote:
| OpenWebUI seems to be really popular and feature rich, has a
| lot of this project's roadmap already. BSD-3
|
| https://github.com/open-webui/open-webui
| insin wrote:
| I think I just blasted through an entire month's quota of
| "seamless" and "effortless" reading that
| verdverm wrote:
| I wonder if the author used a seamless connection to an
| effortless AI?
| o-o- wrote:
| Interesting! Can I hook this up to my calendar and e-mail?
|
| edit: s/an/and
| senectus1 wrote:
| _sigh_ no Linux support :-(
| raffraffraff wrote:
| I'd be fine with that if it had "MacOS" in the title.
| sarp wrote:
| Congratulations on the launch Tim, love the CMD + 0 shortcut and
| local model support. It's definitely something I'd use!
|
| Bug report: cmd + 8 is behaving weird on my laptop, maximizing
| and minimizing several times (Mac OS Sonoma 14.5). Happy to
| provide more details!
|
| Also, I'd expect pressing cmd + 0 to act like a toggle, to close
| it if it's already open (instead of needing to press escape), but
| maybe that's just me!
|
| Looking forward to future work on this!
| notpushkin wrote:
| Oh no, [?]+0 is so useful for resetting zoom level. Glad it's
| (apparently) possible to change it!
| raffraffraff wrote:
| Maybe add "MacOS" to the title.
| CT4u8798 wrote:
| This +1. Should be in the guidelines for submissions. Tired of
| clicking on interesting threads only to find they target on
| specific platform.
| dkmar wrote:
| Nice start. There's definitely room for a good native macOS chat
| client, I have tried a few now and none feel perfect. I found two
| that feel usable:
|
| HuggingChat (https://github.com/huggingface/chat-macOS) It has a
| launcher interface in the current release, and code, latex, etc
| are pretty printed. You can switch from HF hosted models to local
| mlx ones (though those are hardcoded rn i think). I like it for
| quick queries to qwen2.5-coder and I think it would be great if
| they develop it more.
|
| Enchanted (https://github.com/gluonfield/enchanted) This one
| feels a bit buggy and it might be abandoned, but it has basic
| functionality for working with ollama models.
|
| Also worth a mention is aichat
| (https://github.com/sigoden/aichat). It's not a native gui app,
| but it's an impressive cli client.
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