Introducing Calabrass: The Local-First, Open-Source Personal AI Agent for Windows

Mubasher Chaudhary — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 18:29:24 +0000

As AI models become more integrated into our daily workflows, privacy and local control are rapidly becoming top priorities for developers. Many of us want the power of autonomous AI agents without sending private files, codebases, or API interactions to third-party cloud platforms.

That is why I built Calabrass—a native, local-first personal AI assistant and agent workspace built specifically for Windows.

💡 What is Calabrass?

Calabrass is a single-user, open-source AI desktop application that runs entirely on your machine. It combines a streaming chat interface, an autonomous tool-using agent, workspace file awareness, and a Model Context Protocol (MCP) host—all packaged into a lightweight Windows app.

No cloud accounts are required, and no data ever leaves your computer.

✨ Key Features

💬 Streaming Chat & Reasoning UI: Real-time token streaming via Server-Sent Events (SSE) with inline rendering for model reasoning/thinking traces.
🤖 Autonomous Agent & Built-in Tools: Comes with built-in tools for file reading/writing, shell execution, directory listing, web searching, and URL fetching. Point the agent at a workspace folder, and it executes tasks end-to-end.
🔌 Built-in MCP (Model Context Protocol) Host: Easily connect Model Context Protocol servers to extend agent capabilities. Calabrass includes optional bundled servers for Excel automation (excel-mcp) and Windows desktop control (win-control-mcp).
🔑 Bring Your Own Keys (BYOK): Connect any OpenAI-compatible provider (Groq, Together, local Ollama/vLLM) or Google Gemini via direct API keys saved locally in your isolated SQLite database.
🗣️ Real-time Voice (Cal Live): Speech-to-text integration via Groq Whisper or Mistral for hands-free voice input.
🔒 100% Data Ownership: Your chats, workspace files, logs, and provider configurations stay strictly inside %LOCALAPPDATA%\Calabrass.

🧱 Architecture & Tech Stack

Calabrass was designed to be fast, minimal, and fully native:

Layer	Technology
Frontend	React 19, Vite, Tailwind CSS v4, Base UI, TanStack Router
Backend	Go 1.23, SQLite (`modernc.org/sqlite`), GoAI SDK, Server-Sent Events
Desktop	Wails v2 (Native WebView2 window)
Protocol	Official Go MCP SDK (stdio transport)

🚀 Getting Started

You can try Calabrass today by downloading the installer or building it from source:

🌐 Landing Page: calabrass.vercel.app
📦 GitHub Repository: github.com/CodewithMubasher/Calabrass
📥 Direct Download: Download Calabrass-setup-v1.0-x64.exe from the GitHub Releases page.

Running from Source

If you prefer to run or contribute to the project locally:

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/CodewithMubasher/Calabrass.git
cd Calabrass

# Install frontend dependencies
cd Frontend
pnpm install

# Run backend and frontend together
.\dev.ps1

🤝 Community & Contributions

Calabrass is licensed under the MIT License. I would love to hear feedback, feature requests, or contributions from the developer community!

If you find the project interesting, feel free to give it a ⭐️ on GitHub or drop a comment below with your thoughts or questions.

Created by **Mubasher Chaudhary**