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Why OpenWand

OpenWand keeps you productive by making AI prompting a natural, seamless part of your workflow.

Prompting, side by side

Your selected text and the context sources you enabled in the settings are gathered automatically. If needed, enabling a context source is just one click away. Then choose a preset prompt, or enter a custom prompt.

How OpenWand Works

OpenWand gives you access to AI from anywhere on your desktop. With reusable prompts at your fingertips, automatic context gathering, and one-click access to additional sources, every request takes fewer steps.

Prompting AI

You: Press a hotkey → (Add context) → Choose a reusable or custom prompt

OpenWand: Gather and preview context → (Check privacy and prompt injection) → Ask your chosen model → Show the answer

Ask AI to rewrite in Place

You: Select text → Press the rewrite hotkey → (Add context) → Choose a rewrite → Accept

OpenWand: Capture the selection → (Check privacy and prompt injection) → Write answer → Show a preview → Paste it back

Actions in parentheses are optional.

Highlights

• Skip the setup. Just prompt. — Prompt from anywhere without worrying about context.
• Better-presented answers — Every response becomes polished HTML and CSS locally, without an extra model call or cost.
• Codex and Claude integration — Run either agent directly through OpenWand.
• Private mode — Optional warnings and redaction for sensitive context.
• Highly customizable — Customize hotkeys, prompts, context, models, voice, paste-back, and the interface.
• Powerful, but approachable — OpenWand makes models, privacy, memory, and context easy to control.
• Controllable context within one click — OpenWand handles context automatically or with a single click.
• Typing is optional — Speak your prompt and listen to the answer.
• Ask about anything on screen — Draw a region and turn it into visual context instantly.
• Rewrite in place — Rewrite selected text, review it, and paste the result back where it was.
• Use any model you want — Support many popular cloud providers, local models, or any OpenAI-compatible server.
• Memory you control — Keep optional short- and long-term memory locally, where you can review or delete it.
• Extend everything — Add new prompts, actions, hotkeys, hooks, and model tools through addons and MCP.
• Multi-agent work made simple — Build your team through a visual interface with plain-language guidance, then follow its progress and review the results.

Demos

Workflow

Common Shortcuts

Quick Start

Download the App

1. Download the latest version from GitHub Releases.
2. Extract it and launch OpenWand.
3. Open Settings and connect your model.

You can install OpenWand before choosing a model connection. If you do not have one yet, start with one of the 20+ free and trial API sources, or connect a local model.

Run from Source

OpenWand requires Python 3.12.

git clone https://github.com/SunnyLich/OpenWand.git
cd OpenWand

Run the launcher for your platform:

The first launch provisions the Python environment and installs dependencies. Later launches go straight into the app.

To package OpenWand yourself, see Building an EXE.

System Requirements

Local AI models may need substantially more RAM, VRAM, and storage depending on the model. Screen capture, global hotkeys, paste-back, and voice may request the corresponding OS permissions when you use them.

Configuration

Use the Settings window for normal setup. .env.example is only a reference for advanced source configuration.

1. Open Settings.
2. Choose a conversation engine.
3. Connect your provider or account.
4. Customize context, hotkeys, voice, privacy, and memory.
5. Run Setup Check.

Choose Your Harness

Agent Controls

• Continuity — Keep the conversation in OpenWand or resume it with ChatGPT or Claude.
• Live progress — Follow replies, plans, tool activity, file status, and approval requests.
• Permissions — Ask before changes, allow project changes, or use read-only plan mode.
• Project scope — Agent writes stay inside the selected project; changing projects starts a new session.
• History — Import, optionally sync, or export ChatGPT/Codex and Claude conversations.

Good to Know

• Provider keys and OAuth tokens are stored in your OS keychain, not a plain-text configuration file.
• Advanced source settings are documented in .env.example.
• See the live-agent guide or browse the free model API sources for more.

Default Hotkeys

Every caller, hotkey, label, prompt, context source, paste-back setting, and UI dimension is configurable from Settings.

Addons

Deeply extensible, OpenWand transforms with addons - new features, new workflows, new possibilities. Each addon declares its author and requested OpenWand access before activation; an update asks again only when that access expands. Addons run in separate Python processes, and publisher-declared packages stay in dedicated virtual environments. Full-code addons still run with your normal user permissions, so install only addons you trust.

In portable packaged builds, OpenWand creates an addons folder next to OpenWand.exe when that folder is writable. Alternatively, use Addon Manager -> Open addons folder to open the fallback user-writable addon directory.

An addon can hook into OpenWand at several points:

• Context - read or rewrite the prompt and context before a query is sent.
• Tools - register model-callable tools the model can invoke mid-answer.
• Responses - observe completed responses to log, save, or forward them.
• Actions and hotkeys - add its own action rows and global hotkeys with custom prompts.
• UI - contribute tray actions, settings fields, and notifications.
• LLM actions - run its own capped model calls from a hook or hotkey.

What addons can do: because an addon can inject context, expose tools, and react to responses, the surface is broad. A few examples, and the hook each one uses:

If you can write it in Python and it fits one of the hook points above, you can wire it into the same hotkey-driven overlay you already use.

MCP Client and Server

MCP Client: use external servers inside OpenWand

OpenWand ships with an MCP bridge addon (addons/mcp_bridge) that acts as an MCP client: list any Model Context Protocol servers in its servers.json and OpenWand exposes their whole toolkit to its model as OpenWand tools. This lets the overlay use external MCP capabilities without leaving the desktop workflow. See the Addon guide for the full manifest and hook contract, or the Add-ons documentation.

MCP Server: OpenWand Context Server

OpenWand also ships a local MCP stdio server called OpenWand Context Server. Trusted MCP clients such as Claude Desktop, Cursor, and Codex can launch it to read live desktop context; the OpenWand app itself does not need to stay open.

Tools

OpenWand Context Server provides five read-only tools:

• get_selected_text — the text currently selected on the desktop.
• get_clipboard — clipboard text.
• get_active_window — the active app, window title, and browser URL when available.
• read_browser_page — text from the visible browser page.
• take_screen_snip — a screenshot of the primary monitor.

Connect a client

Start OpenWand once, then copy the mcpServers entry from addons/mcp_bridge/claude_config_snippet.json into your MCP client's configuration. OpenWand generates this snippet with the correct local path to its own Python interpreter and addons/mcp_bridge/context_server.py; do not substitute system Python. See the MCP Bridge server setup guide for platform notes and troubleshooting.

Only register the server with clients you trust: tool results can contain selected text, clipboard content, browser content, and screenshots from your desktop.

Privacy and Control

OpenWand has no hosted storage layer.

Privacy Modes

Advanced mode is an optional download of about 2.8 GB and may need time to warm up. It can reduce accidental disclosure, but cannot guarantee that every piece of sensitive information will be detected.

Prompt Injection Protection

When enabled, OpenWand checks captured text for attempts to override the model's instructions and lets you continue or cancel before sending.

For security vulnerabilities, read the Security Policy. Do not include vulnerability details, credentials, captured context, or private logs in a public issue.

Platform Status

*This application was only tested on macOS during two weeks of major development, and I cannot test it afterward due to limited hardware access. If you find bugs on macOS, please create an issue on this repo and I will try my best to fix them. Better yet, if you can provide a solution, please create a pull request.

Help and Feedback

• Troubleshoot common issues
• Report a bug
• Ask a setup or usage question
• Suggest a feature

When reporting a bug, include your OS version, launcher, logs, and the action that triggered it. Logs can contain captured text, so remove credentials and personal information before sharing them.

We are currently working on Linux Wayland support, and help testing or improving it is especially useful. macOS support testing is also welcome; these platforms have the most native integration edge cases, so real-world reports from different machines, desktop environments, and permission states make OpenWand better for everyone.

If you want to support this project and the broader mission, you can contribute to the development directly or make a donation here.

Contributor docs

• Developer README - setup, runtime entrypoints, checks, and debugging notes.
• Code overview - subsystem ownership and runtime boundaries.
• Addon guide - addon manifest, permissions, hooks, tools, hotkeys, and packaging.
• Building an EXE - Windows packaging notes.

Free Model API Sources

Start using OpenWand at no cost with a free API or locally hosted model. Explore more than 20 free and trial API sources, plus local options, in our guide.

Browse the free model guide →

License

MIT