ghost-os

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Your AI agent can write code, run tests, search files. But it can't click a button, send an email, or fill out a form. It lives inside a chat box.

Ghost OS changes that. One install, and any AI agent can see and operate every app on your Mac.

Meet Specter

Ghost OS gives AI agents eyes and hands. Shadow gives them memory. Specter gives them a home.

Deploy persistent AI agents to dedicated VMs in 90 seconds. Automatic DNS, TLS, systemd hardening. Interactive TUI dashboard. You own the infrastructure.

AI agents that earn your trust.

Meet Shadow

Shadow is the other half of the story. Ghost OS gives AI agents eyes and hands on your Mac. Shadow gives them memory and intelligence.

14-modality capture. Proactive suggestions. Episode generation. On-device LLM inference. Computer-use training data. All local, all open source.

Your computer was paying attention the whole time.

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What's New  

Self-learning recipes. Show Ghost OS how to do something once, and it remembers forever.

• ghost_learn_start -- Begin watching the user perform a task
• ghost_learn_stop -- Stop and return the enriched action sequence
• ghost_learn_status -- Check recording progress

The user performs the task manually (clicking, typing, switching apps). Ghost OS observes every action through a CGEvent tap enriched with accessibility tree context. Claude synthesizes the raw observation into a parameterized, replayable recipe.

No screenshots needed. No vision model. Just the accessibility tree and your keyboard/mouse.

User:    "Watch me send an email."
Agent:   ghost_learn_start task_description:"send email in Gmail"
         ...user performs the task...
Agent:   ghost_learn_stop
         -> 8 actions with full AX context
         -> Synthesizes recipe with 3 parameters: recipient, subject, body
         -> ghost_recipe_save
User:    "Send an email to bob about the Q4 report"
Agent:   ghost_run recipe:"gmail-send-learned" params:{...}

Requires Input Monitoring permission (System Settings > Privacy & Security > Input Monitoring). Run ghost setup to configure.

4 new tools. ghost_annotate, ghost_hover, ghost_long_press, ghost_drag. Pinned vision sidecar dependencies, fixed vision model download, Chinese/CJK input support (thanks @junshi5218).

Thank you to the 500+ people who have starred this project. You are why we keep building. If you want to contribute directly, we would love that. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

You:     "Send an email to [email protected] about the Q4 report"
Agent:   ghost_run recipe:"gmail-send" params:{recipient, subject, body}
         → Compose opens, fields fill, email sends. Done.

Setup

Recipes in Action

Send emails and download papers. Any app. Any workflow.

Beyond the Browser

Slack messages, Finder folders — Ghost OS operates native macOS apps, not just browsers.

Why Ghost OS?

Other computer-use tools take screenshots and guess what's on screen. Ghost OS reads the macOS accessibility tree — structured, labeled data about every element in every app. When the AX tree isn't enough (web apps, dynamic content), it falls back to a local vision model (ShowUI-2B) for visual grounding.

And when it figures out a workflow, it saves it. Other tools repeat the same expensive reasoning every time.

• Self-learning — A frontier model figures out the workflow once. A small model runs it forever.
• Transparent — Recipes are JSON. Read every step before running. No black box.
• Native — Accessibility tree first. Vision fallback when needed. Structured data over pixel guessing.
• Any app — Not just browsers. Slack, Finder, Messages — anything on your Mac.
• Local — Your data never leaves your machine.
• Open — MCP protocol. Works with Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, or any MCP client.

		Ghost OS	Anthropic Computer Use	OpenAI Operator	OpenClaw
👀	How it sees	Accessibility tree + local VLM	Screenshots only	Screenshots only	Browser DOM
🖥️	Native apps	Any macOS app	Any (via pixels)	Browser only	Browser only
🧠	Learns workflows	JSON recipes	No	No	No
🔒	Data stays local	Yes	Depends on setup	No (cloud)	Yes
📖	Open source	MIT	No	No	MIT

Install

brew install ghostwright/ghost-os/ghost-os
ghost setup

That's it. ghost setup handles permissions, MCP configuration, recipe installation, and vision model setup.

Homebrew has a known issue on macOS developer betas where it demands an Xcode version that doesn't exist yet. If brew install fails, install directly:

curl -sL https://github.com/ghostwright/ghost-os/releases/latest/download/ghost-os-2.2.1-macos-arm64.tar.gz | tar xz
sudo cp ghost /opt/homebrew/bin/
sudo cp ghost-vision /opt/homebrew/bin/
sudo mkdir -p /opt/homebrew/share/ghost-os
sudo cp GHOST-MCP.md /opt/homebrew/share/ghost-os/
sudo cp -r recipes /opt/homebrew/share/ghost-os/
sudo cp -r vision-sidecar /opt/homebrew/share/ghost-os/
ghost setup

How It Works

Ghost OS connects to your AI agent through MCP and gives it 29 tools to see and operate your Mac. It reads the macOS accessibility tree for structured data about every app. For web apps where the AX tree falls short (Gmail, Slack), a local vision model (ShowUI-2B) finds elements visually. Click, type, hover, drag, scroll, press keys, manage windows. Any app, not just browsers.

You:     "Download the latest paper on chain-of-thought prompting from arXiv"
Agent:   ghost_run recipe:"arxiv-download" params:{query:"chain of thought prompting"}
         → Navigates to arXiv, searches, opens PDF, downloads to Desktop. Done.

Works with Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, or anything that speaks MCP.

Recipes

When your agent figures out a workflow, it saves it as a recipe. A recipe is a JSON file with steps, parameters, and wait conditions. Transparent and auditable.

A frontier model figures out the workflow once. A small model runs it forever.

# One command sends an email
ghost_run recipe:"gmail-send" params:{"recipient":"[email protected]","subject":"Hello","body":"World"}

# 7 steps, 30 seconds, 100% reliable

• Recipes are just JSON. Read every step before running.
• Share with your team. One person learns the workflow, everyone benefits.
• Chain recipes together. The agent knows when to call what.
• Write once with Claude or GPT-4. Run forever with Haiku.

29 Tools

	Tool	What it does
🔍	ghost_context	Get the current app, window title, URL, focused element, and all interactive elements on screen
🔍	ghost_state	List every running app with its windows, positions, and sizes
🔍	ghost_find	Search for elements by name, role, DOM id, or CSS class across the entire UI
🔍	ghost_read	Extract text content from any app, with depth control for nested content
🔍	ghost_inspect	Get complete metadata for one element: role, position, actions, DOM id, editable state
🔍	ghost_element_at	Identify what element is at a specific screen coordinate
📸	ghost_screenshot	Capture a window screenshot for visual debugging
📸	ghost_annotate	Screenshot with numbered labels on interactive elements and click coordinates
👁️	ghost_ground	Find element coordinates using vision (ShowUI-2B). Works when AX tree can't find web elements
👁️	ghost_parse_screen	Detect all interactive elements via vision
🎯	ghost_click	Click an element by name, DOM id, or screen coordinates
🎯	ghost_hover	Move cursor to an element or position to trigger tooltips and hover effects
🎯	ghost_long_press	Press and hold for context menus, Force Touch previews, and drag initiation
🎯	ghost_drag	Drag from one point to another for file moves, sliders, list reordering, text selection
⌨️	ghost_type	Type text into a specific field by name, or at the current cursor
⌨️	ghost_press	Press a single key like Return, Tab, Escape, or arrow keys
⌨️	ghost_hotkey	Press key combinations like Cmd+L, Cmd+Return, Cmd+Shift+P
🎯	ghost_scroll	Scroll up, down, left, or right in any app window
🪟	ghost_focus	Bring any app or specific window to the front
🪟	ghost_window	Minimize, maximize, close, move, or resize any window
⏳	ghost_wait	Wait for a URL change, element to appear or disappear, or title change
📦	ghost_recipes	List all installed recipes with descriptions and parameters
▶️	ghost_run	Execute a recipe with parameter substitution
📦	ghost_recipe_show	View the full steps and configuration of a recipe
📦	ghost_recipe_save	Install a new recipe from JSON
📦	ghost_recipe_delete	Remove an installed recipe
🎓	ghost_learn_start	Start observing the user's actions for workflow learning
🎓	ghost_learn_stop	Stop observing and return the enriched action sequence
🎓	ghost_learn_status	Check if learning mode is active and recording stats

Diagnostics

$ ghost doctor

  [ok] Accessibility: granted
  [ok] Screen Recording: granted
  [ok] Input Monitoring: granted (for learning mode)
  [ok] Processes: 1 ghost MCP process
  [ok] MCP Config: ghost-os configured
  [ok] Recipes: 5 installed
  [ok] AX Tree: 12/12 apps readable
  [ok] ghost-vision: /opt/homebrew/bin/ghost-vision
  [ok] ShowUI-2B model: ~/.ghost-os/models/ShowUI-2B (3.0 GB)
  [ok] Vision Sidecar: not running (auto-starts when needed)

  All checks passed. Ghost OS is healthy.

Build From Source

git clone https://github.com/ghostwright/ghost-os.git
cd ghost-os
swift build
.build/debug/ghost setup

Requires Swift 6.2+ and macOS 14+.

Architecture

AI Agent (Claude Code, Cursor, any MCP client)
    │
    │ MCP Protocol (stdio)
    │
Ghost OS MCP Server (Swift)
    │
    ├── Perception ──── see what's on screen (AX tree)
    ├── Vision ──────── visual grounding (ShowUI-2B, local)
    ├── Actions ─────── click, type, scroll, keys
    ├── Recipes ─────── self-learning workflows
    └── AXorcist ────── macOS accessibility engine

~7,000 lines of Swift + Python vision sidecar. Built on AXorcist by @steipete.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. We need recipes for more apps, testing on different setups, and bug reports. If you're building AI agents that do real things, this is the project.

Contributors

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to Ghost OS.

License

MIT