A bucket for thoughts and ideas — and the shortest path from a thought to a well-formed prompt.
BonsAI is a small, native macOS app. It gives you one resizable canvas where you capture half-formed ideas as cards, sketch relationships, write with Markdown, pull in just-enough context with connectors (your files, open tabs, library docs, tickets, designs, errors...), and let an in-canvas agent read or reshape the board live. An invisible on-device semantic linter quietly flags the spots that are too vague for an AI agent to act on. When a board is ready, you can copy a self-contained prompt out or keep working directly with the agent on the canvas.
The pillar behind every design decision: remove friction between having a thought and getting it into a coding agent. If a feature makes that path longer, it probably doesn't belong here.
- Write and structure ideas. Text cards support Markdown headings, emphasis, code, quotes, lists, and checkboxes while preserving plain text for agents.
- Sketch the shape of the problem. Draw rectangles, ellipses, diamonds, arrows, and freehand marks; hold Shift to keep shapes proportional.
- Ground the board with connector chips. Use
@finder,@browser,@github,@context7,@linear,@notion,@sentry,@figma, and@xcodeto attach the context an agent would otherwise have to ask you for.
- Work with an agent on the board. The chat agent can run through Claude, Codex, or OpenCode, reads the same canvas graph you see, and writes changes back through BonsAI's loopback-only canvas API.
- macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later. The board and every core feature run here.
- macOS 26 (Tahoe) with Apple Intelligence enabled unlocks the on-device extras — the semantic linter and screenshot cleanup — plus the Liquid Glass look. Below Tahoe (or without Apple Intelligence) those quietly turn themselves off and everything else works unchanged.
There's nothing to install or configure: download BonsAI.dmg from
Releases and drag BonsAI onto Applications. Building from source
or contributing? See CONTRIBUTING.md.
Each vX.Y.Z tag publishes a Developer ID-signed and notarized BonsAI.dmg to
Releases. Download it, open it, and drag BonsAI onto the Applications folder —
it launches with a double-click; no right-click or quarantine workaround. (A zipped
BonsAI.app is also attached for Sparkle's auto-update; the .dmg is the recommended
first install.)
BonsAI keeps itself current: it checks GitHub for new releases on launch and once a day, then downloads, installs, and relaunches in place. You can also check any time from BonsAI ▸ Check for Updates… (or Settings ▸ About), and turn off automatic checks there.
Maintaining the release feed (Apple signing + the Sparkle key) is documented in docs/releasing.md.
A connector earns its place when it adds a real capability and removes steps — when it's faster than hand-navigating and fetching the context yourself — and it doesn't duplicate a broader connector. (For the full litmus test and how to build one, see CONTRIBUTING.md.)
| Connector | Injects | Needs a token? |
|---|---|---|
@finder |
A local file/folder, its path and contents | No |
@browser |
An open browser tab's URL, title, and metadata | No |
@context7 |
Current, version-accurate library documentation | No |
@github |
An issue/PR's state, body, and comments (via gh) |
No |
@linear |
A Linear issue's description and acceptance criteria | Yes |
@notion |
A Notion page's content | Yes |
@sentry |
A Sentry issue's error and recent stack trace | Yes |
@figma |
A Figma frame's dimensions, text, and screenshot | Yes |
@xcode |
The latest Xcode build errors / test failures | No |
Tokens are entered in Settings and stored via the system keychain.
What a linter is for a programming language, this is for the meaning of your prose. It runs fully on-device (Apple's Foundation Models), so it's free and private enough to run on every typing pause, and it's tuned hard for precision. Full write-up: docs/semanticlinter.md.
BonsAI ships no model of its own. Refine, Compile, and the in-canvas chat agent run through coding-agent CLIs you already use: Claude Code, Codex, and OpenCode. Refine and Compile use one-shot CLI calls; the chat agent uses each engine's streaming mode with the loopback canvas MCP server attached, so it can read and reshape the board live as you talk.
Settings ▸ Runtime controls which engines are enabled and available. Settings ▸ Models, plus the picker on the Agent panel, choose the chat provider and model where the underlying CLI supports it. Apple Intelligence is separate, fully on-device, and powers the semantic linter only.
- docs/agent-engines.md — the engines, how each is invoked, how one gets picked, and how to add another.
- docs/canvas-agent.md — the board as an agent-readable graph: nodes/edges, the loopback server + MCP tools, and how the agent reads and writes board state.
BonsAI is a normal Dock app built on AppKit + SwiftUI. In 1.3, the workspace is one standard, resizable macOS window with floating canvas chrome: board switcher, tools, zoom, grounding, bottom command bar, and in-canvas Agent and Settings overlays. That composition is load-bearing and easy to "clean up" by accident, so it's documented and guarded in CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md. Read those before touching window or canvas-chrome geometry.
Contributions are welcome — especially around UX friction, new connectors, and the semantic-linter layer. Please read CONTRIBUTING.md first; it explains the philosophy a change has to fit, and what will get a PR rejected. Every PR records a note in CHANGELOG.md.