How chanio works
chanio is your AI's memory and meter. On your machine.
It lives on your computer, answers for free, and remembers what you teach it. Hard questions are held for tonight and answered overnight into a morning brief. You keep a vault of plain files. The model is rented. The mind is yours.
Start in a tab. Keep it on your Mac. Let it run.
Each way in is complete on its own. Each one makes the next easier. The memory is yours on every one of them.
Try it in this tab
No key, no account. A real small model downloads into your browser — about 430 MB, once — and answers from there. Teach it one thing, ask again, and watch it remember. Nothing you type is sent anywhere.
- 1Open /try. The model loads into the tab and runs on your own graphics chip.
- 2Ask something easy. It answers here, instantly, for $0.
- 3Ask something hard. It holds the question for tonight instead of guessing.
- 4Tell it one thing about yourself, then ask again. It remembers.
Put it on your Mac
The real thing, free forever: a genuine local model, a memory that is a folder of plain files, and the whole loop. It captures the AI chats you have, holds the day's big questions, and you run the nightly round yourself. About ten minutes.
- 1Install Ollama and pull a small model. Two commands.
- 2Point chanio at a notes folder. That folder is your vault — open it in Obsidian or any editor.
- 3Ask through the day. Easy answers are instant and local; hard ones are held for tonight.
- 4At night, send the held questions to the AI you already use and save the answers back. Your brief compiles from both.
Let it run for you, or own it
Pro is the same loop with nobody at the keyboard. It runs itself: overnight answers, your morning brief. Mac today, iPhone next. $9.99 a month, in private beta. Own is the software itself — $149 once, yours forever with a year of updates, and each friend you bring refunds $15, up to the full price.
- 1Pro runs the overnight round for you: the local pass, then the one frontier batch, if you held anything.
- 2Your brief compiles at 5 a.m. and is waiting by 6.
- 3The meter shows what stayed local, what was rented, and what it cost.
- 4Own it: $149 once, no subscription — the license that buys itself back.
Free now. Held for tonight. Rented once, only when you say so.
Every question you ask lands in one of three places. The meter tells you which.
A small model on your own machine answers most questions instantly, from your vault, at $0. It is strongest at reading what you keep and weakest at hard judgment — so it is built to know when to stop.
A question that deserves a bigger mind is not guessed at. chanio holds it, packs it with the context from your vault it will need, and adds it to tonight's batch.
Overnight, the held questions go to the big AIs — Claude, Gemini, your choice — and the answers are in your brief by 6am. One batch. Only if you held any.
Two passes. A local pass compiles the day's captures into your vault at $0. A frontier pass sends only the questions you held, in one batch, only if you held any. The brief is the output of both; the meter shows which was which.
The brief compiles at 5 a.m.; a claim check runs at 7 a.m. See the founder's actual 5 a.m. schedule →
A running tab, kept for you.
The meter is the running tab chanio keeps for you: which questions stayed local ($0) and which were rented, at what cost. You see the bill before it arrives — and you see that the vault never went anywhere.
The homepage demo shows it live, question by question. Watch it think →
What a day costs.
$0 for everything local; the one nightly frontier batch is the whole bill — pennies to about fifty cents.
The model is the smallest part of the system; the harness around it is the part you own. Own the surround, rent the intelligence.
| Call | Where | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Everyday answers | On-device | $0runs on your hardware |
| Tonight's held questions | The frontier, one batch | pennies to ~$0.50founder's vault, July 2026 |
| Your own key | Optional — Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini | your key, your bill$0 to chanio |
Own the memory, rent the model. Everything that touches your whole vault — capture, compile, the brief — runs locally, because that is where ownership matters. The frontier is rented for one thing: the questions you held, in one batch, only if you held any. No call crosses that line in the wrong direction. 1,587 files processed nightly at $0 marginal cost (founder's vault, July 2026).
The local pass sees everything and sends nothing. The frontier pass sees only the questions you held — never the vault.
The brief compiles at 5 a.m. on your own machine. Nothing waits on a cloud queue.
$0 for everything local. The one nightly batch is the whole bill, and the meter shows it before you pay it.
The vault is plain files on your disk. Delete chanio and keep them. The model is rented. The mind is yours.
Already have years of ChatGPT or Claude history? Import it and tomorrow morning's brief is dense on day one — one import, zero recurring cost.
See the backfill optionOne folder per project. Context that doesn't erode.
A channel is one folder per project in your vault. Everything a session produces — decisions, open threads, the questions you held — compiles overnight into the right one, so the next session starts already knowing where you left off.
An illustration with made-up projects. Your channels compile from your real sessions to your own disk — no server holds your context.
Three things that don't work yet, or don't work everywhere.
A small model is good at reading what you keep and poor at hard judgment. That is exactly why there are three tiers instead of one: the hard question is held, not guessed. Why we think so →
It saves the pages you choose (Cmd-Shift-S) and the AI chats you have; it can read any page you're on, so it asks for all-site permission. Nothing is sent anywhere but your own machine. It needs chanio-core, which isn't public yet — most people should start at /setup →
Running nightly on the founder's Mac since July 2026. On Free you run it yourself; Pro runs it for you and is in private beta. Mac free beta now · iPhone/iPad next · Windows/Android 2027. Join the Pro beta →
No. Your vault is a folder of plain markdown files. Obsidian is a good way to read it, and so is any text editor. Nothing here depends on it — it is just the nicest window onto files that are already yours.
An AI of your own.
Free on your Mac today.
Ten minutes, a real model, a vault that is yours. iPhone and iPad next; Windows and Android in 2027.
Get chanio — freeThe model is rented. The mind is yours.