First time here

Your first ten minutes.

chanio is an AI that lives on your own Mac. It answers from the notes you give it and keeps everything as ordinary files you can open without it. Six steps. No account. No password.

  1. Step 1 · one minute

    See it answer, in your browser

    Open the demo on a laptop. A small AI downloads into the page once, then answers right there, even with wi-fi off. Tell it one thing about yourself, then ask about it.

    Open the demo →

    Works best in Chrome or Edge on a laptop. No Mac? The notebook keeps notes and answers from them in a browser tab.

  2. Step 2 · a few minutes, plus one download

    Put it on your Mac

    Open Terminal: press ⌘ Space, type Terminal, press Return. Paste this line and press Return:

    curl -fsSL https://chanio.com/install.sh | sh

    It tells you before each download and never asks for your password. The AI itself is about 2 GB, so the first time takes a few minutes. If a window called Ollama opens, close it: that is the engine the small AI runs on, and it keeps going from your menu bar. When Terminal says Ready, open a new Terminal window.

    Want to read what the line does first? The setup page shows every step. Needs macOS 14 or newer. Macs with an M-series chip answer in a second or two; older Macs are slower.

  3. Step 3 · ten seconds

    Open it

    In the new Terminal window, type:

    chanio door

    chanio opens in your browser. It is a page on your own Mac, and nobody else can reach it. Everything from here on happens on that page.

  4. Step 4 · two minutes

    Give it something to know

    chanio answers from the notes you give it. It starts with one made-up example week, so your first question has something to find. Paste anything you want it to remember into the box (a plan, class notes, a conversation with another AI) and click Save what’s in the box to your notes.

    Already keep notes in files? Type open ~/chanio/notes to open chanio’s notes folder and drop them in. A long ChatGPT history works too: turn the export into notes first, right in your browser.

  5. Step 5 · the good part

    Ask it

    Try What do I have due this week? It answers from your notes, on your Mac, with your own sentences, word for word, so you can check each one against its note.

    When your notes don’t cover a question, it says so instead of guessing, and you choose: keep the question for tonight, or send it now to a bigger AI if you added your own key. That is on purpose: a small AI that guesses is worse than one that waits.

  6. Step 6 · tomorrow morning

    Read the morning summary

    Overnight it writes a short summary of what changed and what is still open. The questions you kept for tonight go one of two ways:

    • If you added your own Claude key in the door’s Settings, they get answered in one small batch, under a daily spending limit you set.
    • If you didn’t, nothing is sent. Under the morning summary, Copy the questions gets them ready for the AI you already use. Paste its reply into the box there and click Add the answer.

    A question that looks private (a password, a key, a health detail) is never sent; your Mac answers it as best it can.

    In the door, click Read the morning summary (or type chanio brief). Don’t want to wait for morning? Type chanio nightly and read it a few seconds later.