K.ai for Mac

Release notes

1.0.6

• A dollar left says so. When your balance dips under $1, a quiet note appears above the ask box with a Top up button — and disappears on its own the moment a top-up lands.

1.0.5

• One name, easier to remember. K.ai now lives at usek.ai — same product, same key, and alohak.ai keeps working for everything that already points there.
• Ask for a picture in your own words. "Give me a few color variations" on a photo comes back as pictures — several when you ask for several — instead of a description. The picture K.ai is holding shows above the ask box with an ✕ to let it go.
• Deleting really deletes. Removing a conversation now ends everything speaking for it, immediately and on the server too.

Previous release: 1.0.5 · manifest · signature

1.0.4

• Choose your speed. A new Fast / Auto / Max chip in the composer: Auto picks the right model per question as always, Fast answers on the quickest lane, Max puts the strongest model on every answer. Your choice is remembered.
• Thumbs that answer back. Rating an answer now fills the thumb instantly, and the mark stays put across scrolling and relaunch.
• Long answers stream smoothly. The transcript renders at reading cadence while an answer streams — big reasoning answers no longer make the app work up a sweat, and launch shows your projects immediately.

1.0.3

• Answers read like a well-set page. Body text is a step larger with more generous line spacing, and tables finally breathe — real cell padding, striped rows, and a bold header instead of numbers jammed against the rules.
• The voice indicator now rides your microphone: the dots move with your voice, so you can see K.ai hearing you.
• Regenerate and Think harder now reliably teach the router which answers fell short — the learning signal they were built for lands every time.

1.0.2

• Transcribe meetings. A new toolbar button captures a meeting for as long as it runs — transcribed live, minute by minute — and saves the transcript as a file attached to the chat, ready for "summarize this" or "what were the action items?"
• Conversations keep their depth: a quick "why?" after a hard answer stays on the stronger model instead of dropping to a lighter one.
• Attached documents and photos now follow the conversation for a few turns, so follow-up questions don't need re-attaching.
• Regenerate and Think harder quietly teach the router which answers fell short.

1.0.1

• Closing the window no longer briefly freezes the app when macOS's permission service responds slowly — menu-bar status checks are instant now.

Previous versions: K.ai 1.0.3 · manifest · signature — K.ai 1.0.2 · manifest · signature — K.ai 1.0.1 · manifest · signature

K.ai for Linux Beta

Kai, headless. A daemon indexes the folders you point it at — an Obsidian vault, an org-mode tree, any folder of open files — into a private index that never leaves your machine, and a CLI asks questions with that context right in your terminal. No GUI required, ever.

• x86_64: kai-0.1.0-beta.3-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
• ARM64: kai-0.1.0-beta.3-linux-aarch64.tar.gz
• Manifest: manifest · signature

Static binaries — no runtime to install, any distribution. Verify the same way as the Mac release:

gpg --import kai-release-public-key.asc
gpg --verify kai-0.1.0-beta.3-linux-manifest.txt.asc kai-0.1.0-beta.3-linux-manifest.txt
sha256sum -c kai-0.1.0-beta.3-linux-manifest.txt

Get running

Unpack and install. Everything is user-level — the binaries land in ~/.local/bin plus a systemd user unit. No root, no system directories.

tar -xzf kai-0.1.0-beta.3-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
cd kai-0.1.0-beta.3-linux-x86_64
./install.sh
systemctl --user enable --now kaid   # optional — keeps the index live

Link a folder and ask. Indexing happens entirely on your machine; kai brain status shows resumable progress and honestly lists anything the beta skipped.

kai brain add ~/notes --name "Notes"
kai brain status
kai "what did I decide about the greenhouse fans?"
kai query "greenhouse fans"      # local search only — works offline

Chat needs an API key: open web chat, tap the identity chip → API keys, mint one, then run kai login and paste it. Answers stream into the terminal with their citations and exactly what each one cost; kai balance shows the balance as of the last answer (live balance at usek.ai).

Without the daemon everything still works — kai brain add indexes one-shot and kai query reads the index directly. With it running, linked folders stay fresh as you edit (inotify). kai help lists every command.

Where things live

The index is ~/.local/share/kai and never leaves this machine. The grant list is a readable file, ~/.config/kai/brains.toml — inspectable, diffable, easy to carry to a new machine. Your API key sits in ~/.config/kai/config.toml, mode 600; kai logout removes it. Linked folders are read-only to Kai, and kai brain remove deletes that folder's index — never your files.

What the beta is: lexical retrieval (SQLite FTS5) over the same index schema as the Mac's External Brain, with the notes-relationship graph; Markdown, org, plain text, CSV/JSON, and code. kai query never touches the network. PDFs, on-device dense vectors, and pairing your phone to a Linux box (K.ai Link) are the next steps — and honestly listed as not in this beta.

Android, web, iPhone

Android 1.5.1 — get it on Zapstore, the Nostr-native app store. Documents, voice conversations, Kai Lens, and Lightning top-ups.

Web — web chat works in any browser with the same account key.

iPhone and iPad — coming soon.