This needs 164 MB of disk space. Not to bad. Thank you to the author for this.
That's just the binary. It needs at least another order of magnitude beyond that to download the model.
Sidekick: Local-first native macOS LLM app
61–70 of 97 posts
Re: Sidekick: Local-first native macOS LLM app
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve read the same thing about cryptocurrencies for so long (it needs a proper GUI to take off)
I miscommunicated( I meant new 3D game-like UIs. There can be a whole new OS full apps that represent multimodal LLMs in human-familiar ways. All the UI now is what I consider commandline-like. They are like a strict librarian that only spits quotes, no one allows you to truly enter the library. We need better 3D and even “4D” long exposure photo like UIs
I got what you mean. People have said cryptocurrencies are one UX revolution away from mainstream adoption since its inception. The reality was/is, it’s a solution in search of a problem.
Re: Sidekick: Local-first native macOS LLM app
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Pretty decent" is irellevant for proprietary code that's not my property. The only safe option is if it's guaranteed to not leave my machine, so for this app, to disable anything that has a chance of exfiltrating data.
I encourage you to try to understand how verifiable transparency works. https://security.apple.com/blog/pcc-security-research/
I doubt my customer - on whose proprietary code I want to try running LLMs - cares :)
Or to rephrase: would you go to court with the contents of that link as evidence that you haven't inadvertently published someone else's proprietary data in some external database?
Re: Sidekick: Local-first native macOS LLM app
#64Why no MLX?
I think it uses Llama.cpp, which doesn't support MLX.
Re: Sidekick: Local-first native macOS LLM app
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure seems to. https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Ajohnbean393%2FSidekick%20...
This is getting murky. As a suggestion to the author, please try to make it verifiably local only with an easy to set option.
Tavily search is an option, disabled by default.
Maybe the author could make a note of that in the README.
Re: Sidekick: Local-first native macOS LLM app
#66> Image generation is availible on macOS 15.2 or above, and requires Apple Intelligence. ... so image generation is not fully offline? This tool looks like it could be worth a try to me, but only if I'm sure I can run it into a mode that's fully offline.
Apple Intelligence image generation is fully offline
Re: Sidekick: Local-first native macOS LLM app
#67Does it support MCP?
Re: Sidekick: Local-first native macOS LLM app
#68The name gave me a flashback to Borland Sidekick
Was this the MS-DOS TSR app that kept running in the background and you could invoke at any time? Fond memories!
I was going to say the same thing. It had so many cool tools. A calculator, ascii chart, notepad, calendar. And the whole idea of a tsr opened a door in my head which hadn't seen multiple programs running at the same time till then.
Re: Sidekick: Local-first native macOS LLM app
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I miscommunicated( I meant new 3D game-like UIs. There can be a whole new OS full apps that represent multimodal LLMs in human-familiar ways. All the UI now is what I consider commandline-like. They are like a strict librarian that only spits quotes, no one allows you to truly enter the library. We need better 3D and even “4D” long exposure photo like UIs
I got what you mean. People have said cryptocurrencies are one UX revolution away from mainstream adoption since its inception. The reality was/is, it’s a solution in search of a problem.
Who said it and how it relates to what I wrote? You’re majorly straw-manning what I proposed
Re: Sidekick: Local-first native macOS LLM app
#70Looks great, kudos for making it open-source! Yet as with any app that has access to my local file system, what instantly comes to mind is "narrow permissions" / principle of least permissions.
It'd be great if the app would only have read access to my files, not full disk permission.
As an end-user, I'm highly concerned that files might get deleted or data shared via the internet.
So ideally, Sidekick would have only "read" permissions and no internet access. (This applies really to any app with full disk read access).
Also: why does it say Mac Silicon required? I can run Llama.cpp and Ollama on my intel mac.