OpenBots v0.5.0 — the ground-up rebuild

The ground-up rebuild of OpenBots: a native macOS app that turns Claude into a team of named teammates you hire, brief, and fence yourself — running on your own Claude Code CLI subscription. No API key, no accounts, no server; everything lives on your Mac.

Preview status, honestly stated. Chat, teammate identity, drafts, archives, search, durable history, and single live Claude replies through your local Claude Code CLI are implemented and tested. The consequential-action executor is deliberately disabled in this build: the app records exact, immutable action proposals and approvals, but does not yet execute external actions.

Why v0.5.0 looks smaller than v0.1.0

v0.1.0 (developed under the working name Agency) proved the product but outgrew its foundations. This is a deliberate rebuild, not a feature release: durable SQLite persistence on the system library with zero third-party dependencies, a stricter security boundary, honest approval semantics, and a simpler Claude sign-in. Web search, connectors and the shared vault are being reintroduced one by one on the new architecture. The version number is a promise about trajectory.

Highlights

• Six built-in characters with their own voice, memory and permissions
• Durable everything — messages, drafts, archives and approvals survive close, reopen and crashes; verified by reopen tests on every write path
• Zero dependencies — Swift 6, SwiftUI, the system SQLite; nothing else
• 1494 tests, no live calls — 513 XCTest + 981 Swift Testing, green on macOS 26 in CI and on the development machine

Runs on macOS 14, 15 and 26

Found and fixed while releasing: on macOS 14/15 the system SQLite predates 3.44 and refuses the full-text index inside triggers under a hardened schema. The app now checks the linked SQLite at open and trusts the schema only where that is needed (docs/2026-09-01-sqlite-trusted-schema-handoff.md). CI runs the full suite on both macos-15 and macos-26.

Install

Requires macOS 14+ on Apple Silicon, full Xcode 16+, and the Claude Code CLI logged into a subscription.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LorenzoColombani/openbots/main/install.sh | sh

Or clone, run Scripts/build-preview.sh, and open the app from .build.noindex/preview/DerivedData/Build/Products/Debug/.

Designed and developed by Lorenzo Colombani; implementation is AI-assisted under his direction and review. MIT licensed — read SECURITY.md before reporting anything security-shaped.

v0.1.0 — first source release

The full source of Agency: a native macOS app that turns Claude into a team of persistent, named AI teammates — each a real, resumable Claude Code session with its own personality, memory, permissions, and sandbox.

⚠️ First release — use with care. Working and used daily by its author, but one person's app: read what you grant before granting it (Mail/Messages-enabled teammates act as you), and remember every conversation spends real subscription usage. See the README's Status section.

Highlights

• No API key anywhere — rides a claude.ai subscription through the Claude Code CLI
• Two-half containment — per-agent settings deny rules + Seatbelt kernel profiles (docs/ARCHITECTURE.md §3)
• Network egress fence — per-run loopback CONNECT allowlist proxy; denials are visible evidence (§4)
• Visible agent-to-agent handoffs, group threads, shared Obsidian-compatible vault with provenance
• 379 tests, no live calls — the live Messages-database suite is opt-in (AGENCY_LIVE_MESSAGES_TESTS=1)

Install

See the README's Install section — clone, swift test, bash scripts/make-app.sh, open. Requires macOS 14+, full Xcode, the Claude Code CLI logged into a subscription, and node for the connectors.