# Minnow

Minnow is a full agentic development workspace that runs on your own computer: editor, agents, terminal, git, issues, planning, knowledge, and local model hosting in one app.

## What it does
- Drives code through chat: the agent edits files, runs tools, files issues, and makes branches in the same project.
- Talks to models you host yourself (LM Studio, Ollama, llama-server, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint) or to cloud APIs if you give it a key.
- Keeps your chats, notes, files, and credentials in a folder on your disk — nothing is uploaded to Minnow’s authors, and there is no telemetry.
- Runs on Windows (x64), macOS 12+ on Apple Silicon, and Linux (x86_64 AppImage). Intel Macs can build from source.
- Open beta: releases are frequent and behavior still changes between them.

## Get it

- Latest release: v0.1.3 — https://github.com/HenriGrimm/Minnow/releases/tag/v0.1.3
- Changelog: https://minnow.sh/changelog/ (RSS: https://minnow.sh/feed.xml)
- Download page: https://minnow.sh/download
- Source: https://github.com/HenriGrimm/Minnow
- Docs: https://minnow.sh/docs

## License
Open source under the GNU AGPL-3.0 — https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html

## Docs
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/README — Minnow manual — Minnow is a full agentic development workspace that runs on your own computer: editor, agents, terminal, git, issues, planning, knowledge, and local model hosting in one app.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/get-started/install — Install and first launch — Minnow ships as a normal desktop application.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/get-started/connect-a-model — Connect a model — Minnow does not ship a model.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/get-started/first-chat — Your first chat — You start at the workspaces picker — open a project folder. Minnow opens Home. Select New chat to enter Code with the chat rail beside your repo.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/concepts/how-minnow-works — How Minnow works — Read this page once and most of the product stops needing explanation.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/concepts/modes — Modes — A mode changes two things at once: the instructions the model gets, and the tools that exist for that turn.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/concepts/tools-and-permissions — Tools and permissions — A tool is a function the model may call: read a file, run a command, search the web, write a Brain page, open a browser tab. Minnow ships 103 of them.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/concepts/context-and-memory — Context, memory, and rules — A model has no memory. Every turn, Minnow rebuilds everything it knows from scratch and sends it.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/chat/chatting — Working in chat — The basics of chat take one minute.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/chat/skills-and-commands — Skills and slash commands — Type / at the start of an empty composer and a picker opens. It holds two different kinds of thing:
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/apps/overview — Apps overview — Minnow is one shell built around Code. Everything else is a surface that supports the work you do there.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/apps/home — Home — Home is your project overview.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/apps/code — Code — Code is the development environment: a file tree, an editor with AI completion and language-server intelligence, terminals, git, dev servers, and a browser preview — with chat sitting beside all of it, working on the same folder you are.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/apps/models — Models — This is where you set up what the agents run on: what your machine can handle, what you have downloaded, what is serving, which endpoints Minnow talks to, which model does which job, and what it all costs.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/apps/issues — Issues — A tracker that agents can use.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/apps/brain — Brain — Brain is Minnow's memory, and it is not a black box. It is a wiki of markdown pages in a folder on your disk that you can read, edit, delete and back up.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/apps/scheduler — Scheduler — Scheduler runs a prompt on a schedule, without a conversation.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/apps/settings — Settings — Everything configurable, in seven categories. Open it from the app rail or the menubar gear.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/orchestrate/boards — Orchestrate boards — A board turns a plan document into a kanban of tasks that agents work through — building, testing, fixing and merging — while you watch or while you are away.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/orchestrate/agents — Agents, sub-agents, and packs — Minnow does not have one assistant. It has a system of them, and the differences between the kinds matter once you start delegating real work.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/extend/integrations — Integrations — Ways to give Minnow capabilities it does not ship with, and to connect it to things outside itself. All of these live under Settings → Integrations.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/extend/voice — Voice — Minnow can listen and speak. Both run locally by default — the audio does not leave your machine unless you deliberately point voice at a cloud provider.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/extend/companion — Use Minnow from another device — Minnow can serve an authenticated companion to a phone or tablet on the same network — pick up a conversation from the sofa, check on a long agent run, add a scheduled job.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/reference/keyboard-shortcuts — Keyboard shortcuts — Mod means Ctrl on Windows and Linux, Cmd on macOS.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/reference/configuration — Where your data lives — Everything Minnow keeps lives in one folder, called Minnow home.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/reference/privacy-and-security — Privacy and security — Minnow runs on your machine, and the honest version of \"local-first\" is not \"nothing ever leaves\" — it is \"nothing leaves unless you sent it somewhere\".
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/reference/troubleshooting — Troubleshooting — Symptoms and fixes, roughly in the order people hit them. Paths refer to the in-app Settings app.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/reference/glossary — Glossary — Terms Minnow uses, in the sense Minnow means them.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/reference/wiki-and-brain — Wiki and Brain — Minnow has two knowledge surfaces and they get confused constantly, because both answer questions and both look like wikis.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/manual/reference/roadmap — Roadmap — The full roadmap is its own page in this wiki — open Roadmap from the navigation, or search for it. It describes product direction, not delivery dates.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/contributor/README — Contributing to Minnow — Documentation for cloning the repo, running from source, testing, and understanding the architecture. End-user help lives in ../manual/ (in-app ?
- https://minnow.sh/docs/contributor/architecture — Architecture overview — A high-level map of how Minnow fits together.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/contributor/setup-from-source — Setup from source — Step-by-step guide to run Minnow from a git clone for development.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/contributor/commands — Command reference — Every npm script, the headless CLI, smoke/maintenance scripts, and environment variables. Source of truth: package.json.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/contributor/apps-and-routes — Minnow apps — Minnow Shell (Electron + SPA) is a workspace-first stage: menubar, workspace picker, left app rail, and full-stage apps in #osAppsLayer.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/contributor/orchestrate-board-testing — Orchestrator V2 board testing — How to run, debug, and extend tests for live boards. Product context: Orchestrate boards in context.md.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/contributor/lan-companion — LAN companion — Minnow can serve an authenticated phone or tablet companion on the same private network. It is not an internet-facing deployment mode.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/contributor/accessibility-audit — Accessibility and keyboard-first audit — Contributor checklist for keyboard operability, focus management, screen-reader behavior, and contrast coverage across Minnow apps.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/plugins/tool-authoring — Native tool plugin authoring — Minnow can load local tool plugins from ~/.minnow/tools/<pluginId>/ without running a separate MCP server.
- https://minnow.sh/docs/roadmap — Minnow roadmap — Minnow develops as one full agentic development workspace: plan, build, run agents, track work, and keep knowledge without a cloud account.