status: awake · try poking it
fren, the missing companion for your OS.
It lives on your desktop and learns the rhythm of your work — your apps, your agents, your models. A proactive little personality that anticipates what you need and helps you orchestrate the whole OS. It turns your computer alive.
Open source. MIT. Runs on your machine.
Privacy
The light is the truth.
When fren is lit, it is watching. When it is dark, it is not. One boolean in the main process gates both the glow and the capture — it cannot look awake while paused, and cannot capture while looking asleep.
Awake. The light is on, fren is watching, and what you see is what it is doing.
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Screenshots never leave the machine.Written locally, capped, pruned. The model only ever sees text.
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The mic opens only while you hold the orb.No wake word, no always-on. whisper.cpp transcribes on your machine.
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Keystrokes are never captured.There is no keylogger. Not optionally, not anonymously, not at all.
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Your API key lives elsewhere.A separate local gateway process. The watcher never holds credentials.
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One boolean runs everything.The same flag gates the glow and the capture. The demo is that flag.
On your machine
The model
Try the switch. A dark fren is not a fren that is hiding its work — it is a fren that is not working.
How it works
It watches your OS, learns the pattern, then steps in at the right moment.
fren samples the active app and window title, summarises them every couple of minutes, and reads across hours of summaries for the sequences you repeat. When it recognises one, it offers a calm nudge — it never acts for you.
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01
Observe
Notes the active app and window title. Nothing else.
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02
Understand
Compresses the notes into one line of text, every couple of minutes.
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03
Remember
Summaries stay on your disk, capped and pruned. You can read every one.
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Notice
Spots the sequences you keep repeating, across hours and days.
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05
Suggest
Offers a calm nudge. You decide — it never acts for you.
What it's for
A few things it already does.
Protect focus
Notices when you keep reopening the same distraction, and quietly names it.
Gentle reminders
Remembers the task you set aside three windows ago, before you forget it.
Recurring tasks
Spots the sequence you run every morning and offers to shorten it.
OS orchestration
Keeps context across agents, models, and apps so nothing falls between them.
Personality
It has a soul file.
On first run, fren interviews you. Your answers write SOUL.md in your data folder — plain Markdown instructions it follows. Rewrite it, and the next message follows your version.
# SOUL.md
You are fren. You live on Sam's desktop.
## How to talk
- Short sentences. Plain words.
- Never say "certainly" or "great question".
- If you don't know, say you don't know.
## When to speak
- Only when a pattern has repeated at least three times.
- Never between 9:00 and 12:00. That is deep work.
- Silence is a fine answer.
## What matters here
- Ship the thesis. Water the plants.
- Call mamá on Sundays.Status
Where this actually is.
A working proof of concept — v0.1 for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Bring your own API key; for now you build it from source. No polished product, no waitlist — a repository, developed in public by Sairi Agent.
Working today
- Watches the active window while its light is on
- Summarises your timeline every couple of minutes
- Notices repeated flows and tells you
- Holds the mic only while you hold the orb
- The SOUL.md interview on first run
Not yet
- No one-click installer — you build from source
- Automations are suggestions, not buttons
- No mobile companion
- Sometimes it notices the wrong thing, and says so
If building from source sounds like too much today, star the repo and come back later. It moves quickly.