askimo

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Why Askimo?

You shouldn't have to choose between the best AI model, your privacy, and getting real work done.

• One app, every model. Stop juggling browser tabs. Chat with OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, Grok, or a local Ollama model, switch in seconds, no copy-pasting.
• Built as a native desktop app. Not a web wrapper. Starts fast, runs lean, and stays responsive even after hours of use and thousands of messages in a single conversation.
• Long conversations that actually work. No crashes, no tab reloads, no lost context. Askimo handles deep, extended sessions the way a real desktop app should.
• More than just chat. Delegate real work to autonomous agent CLIs (Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity), chain multi-step AI Plans from a form UI, and connect MCP tools, all from the same app.
• Skills, managed once, used everywhere. Define a skill independently of any single agent, then run it with whichever agent CLI fits the job. No per-agent duplication or lock-in.
• Talk to it, not just type. Dictate messages and have responses read back to you. Fully local/offline speech-to-text and text-to-speech options included.

🔒 Privacy by design. Your files, RAG index, conversation history, and telemetry all stay on your machine, nothing is uploaded, ever. Local RAG, local SQLite storage, local usage/cost tracking. The only network calls are the ones you configure (your chosen AI provider).

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See It in Action

Agents - select the installed agent CLI and delegate a goal:

RAG - search and chat with your local files:

MCP tools - connect any MCP-compatible server:

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Quick Start

Download for macOS, Windows, or Linux →

1. Install and open Askimo
2. Add a provider - paste an API key (OpenAI, Claude, Gemini…) or point it at a running Ollama instance
3. Start chatting

Full setup guide →

System Requirements

OS	macOS 11+, Windows 10+, Linux (Ubuntu 20.04+, Debian 11+, Fedora 35+)
Memory	50–300 MB (AI models require additional memory depending on provider)
Disk	250 MB

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Features

AI & Providers

• Multi-provider - Switch between OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Ollama, LM Studio, Docker AI, OpenRouter, NVIDIA NIM, Together AI, vLLM Server, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint per session
• Vision - Attach images to conversations; works with any multimodal model

Search & Data

• Web search (multiple backends) - Search the web with DuckDuckGo (no API key), Brave Search API, Tavily, Serply, or your own SearxNG instance
• Local RAG - Index local folders, files, and web URLs. Hybrid BM25 + vector retrieval with an AI classifier that skips retrieval when the query doesn't need it. Your data never leaves your machine.

Workflows & Extensibility

• Plans (agentic workflows) - Chain multi-step AI pipelines from a form UI. Each step builds on the previous; progress shown live. Export as PDF or Word. Define your own plans in YAML or generate them by describing your workflow in plain English.
• Script runner - Execute Python, Bash, and JavaScript from chat. Python runs in an auto-managed virtualenv with automatic dependency installation.
• MCP tool integration - Connect MCP-compatible servers via stdio or HTTP

AI Agents (CLI)

• Run autonomous coding agents - Delegate a goal to Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, or Google Antigravity directly from Askimo, with live streamed tool calls, thinking, and status
• Reusable skills - Define a skill once and materialize it into any supported agent's native skill-discovery folder, so it's just as invocable there as in Askimo's own chat

Voice

• Speech-to-text - Dictate messages via OpenAI's transcription API or a fully local/offline built-in Whisper engine (whisper.cpp)
• Text-to-speech - Have AI responses read aloud via OpenAI's TTS API or a fully local/offline Piper endpoint, with optional auto-play for hands-free "conversation mode"

Reliability & Privacy

• Persistent sessions - Conversations stored in a local SQLite database, restored on restart
• Local telemetry - Token usage, cost estimates, RAG performance per provider. Nothing uploaded.
• i18n - English, Chinese (Simplified & Traditional), Japanese, Korean, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Vietnamese

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Building from Source

Prerequisites

• JDK 25+
• Git

git clone https://github.com/askimo-ai/askimo.git
cd askimo

# Run the desktop app
./gradlew :desktop:run

# Build native installers
./gradlew :desktop:package

Project Structure

Module	Description
desktop/	Compose Multiplatform desktop application
desktop-shared/	Shared UI components
shared/	Kotlin Multiplatform common module: domain models/DTOs, chat types, event bus, and shared utils used by both JVM and other targets
shared-jvm/	Core: providers, RAG, MCP, memory, tools, database, plans engine, skills & agent runtimes

See CONTRIBUTING.md for development guidelines and DCO requirements, or the Development Getting Started Guide.

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Localization

English · 中文 (简体/繁體) · 日本語 · 한국어 · Français · Español · Deutsch · Português · Tiếng Việt

Translations are managed on Crowdin. Contributions welcome - no coding required.

Help translate Askimo →

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License

AGPLv3. See LICENSE.

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Contributing

Bug reports, feature requests, and pull requests are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for details.

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Star History

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Contributors