Sidekit

An always-on-top, fully on-device desktop surface you summon mid-task and let go of. Open it and you get your dictation (SpeakType — hold a key, speak, clean text appears in any app), a temporary Shelf for files, and a Mirror for a pre-call glance. Nothing leaves your machine.

Sidekit is the product; SpeakType, Shelf, and Mirror are features inside it.

Website & download: https://sidekit.app · License: MIT

New here? STRUCTURE.md is a guided tour of the whole repo — read that one file to understand how everything fits together. Want to help? See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Repository layout

The shipped app lives in mac/ (Swift, macOS), plus shared planning docs in vision/ and docs/. Windows is a planned future platform (see vision/) — not yet in the repo. The full annotated map and a "where do I start?" guide is in STRUCTURE.md.

Sidekit-v1-spec.md is the decision-resolved spec; BRICKS.md is the session-by-session build log.

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macOS (mac/)

Native menu-bar app. Hold the 🌐 (Fn) key, speak, release — transcribed on-device and pasted into whatever app you're typing in.

Requirements: Apple Silicon Mac, macOS 14+.

Install (no build needed)

Homebrew (recommended):

brew tap omkareshwar-tripathi/sidekit
brew trust --cask omkareshwar-tripathi/sidekit/sidekit
brew install --cask sidekit

brew trust is a one-time step Homebrew requires for any third-party cask. After it, Sidekit installs and opens with no Gatekeeper warning.

Or download directly: grab Sidekit.dmg from https://sidekit.app and drag Sidekit to Applications.

First launch after a direct download: Sidekit isn't notarized by Apple yet, so macOS blocks the first open with "Apple could not verify…" (offering only Done / Move to Bin). To allow it — you only do this once:

1. Click Done (not Move to Bin).
2. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down, and click Open Anyway next to Sidekit.
3. Open Sidekit again and confirm.

Or, in Terminal: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Sidekit.app

The Homebrew install above handles this for you automatically. A notarized build is coming.

Build from source

For developers — needs Xcode command-line tools (xcode-select --install):

cd mac
./Scripts/build-app.sh        # builds, fetches+bundles the model, signs Sidekit.app
open Sidekit.app

build-app.sh is the one command you need — see mac/README.md for permissions setup and troubleshooting.

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Windows — planned

Windows is on the roadmap: Sidekit comes to Windows after Mac (see vision/ROADMAP.md). An earlier .NET prototype was removed to be rebuilt — there is no Windows build in the repo yet.