Under the hood

Everything that turns a model into an assistant.

A model generates text. Aletha is the layer around it — memory, voice, a vault, a calendar — built to run entirely on your Mac. Here's exactly how each piece works, because you're the kind of person who checks.

Memory

Memory that survives a model swap — because it isn't tied to the model.

Every memory is turned into a vector by a dedicated embedding model, kept separate from whatever chat model you're running. That's the whole trick: switch an 8B for a 32B, or Qwen for Llama, and the chat model changes but your memory index doesn't move. Recall is semantic — ask about something you mentioned weeks ago in different words and it still surfaces, matched by meaning, not keywords.

A living profile

In the background, when you're idle, it rewrites a running summary of you from the memories you use most, and hands it to whatever model you're on — so a small model still knows you.

It maintains itself

Idle passes merge near-duplicate memories, let newer facts supersede contradicting older ones with a browsable history, and age out what you stopped using — never touching the vault.

A memory you can see

Everything lives in a memory graph you can browse, prune, and undo. Nothing is a black box; you can watch what it remembers and archive anything, reversibly.

Your models

A read-only adapter over your own Ollama.

Aletha reads the models installed in your Ollama — including ones on disk when the daemon isn't even running — and lets you switch between them mid-conversation. It is strictly read-only: it never starts your daemon, never pulls, copies, imports, or modifies a model, never touches your files. Your models stay exactly as you left them. Prefer zero setup? A capable model ships built in and is the default.

The vault

A vault for your most personal information.

Passwords, keys, and private notes are held in an AES-256 encrypted vault, unlocked only by a passphrase processed through 310,000 rounds of key derivation. The vault is encrypted storage, not a searchable index: its contents are never loaded into the model, so they cannot surface in a response, a prompt, or a log. Everything remains on your machine, and because the passphrase itself is never stored, a lost passphrase cannot be recovered by anyone — including us.

Voice

It starts speaking before the answer's finished.

A hotkey floats Aletha over whatever you're in. Your mic is captured only while the window is open — no wake word, no background listening — transcribed on-device, answered by your model, and spoken back sentence by sentence as each one is ready, rather than waiting for the whole reply. It keeps your model warm between turns, so on the built-in model the response starts in about two seconds, in one of five built-in voices. Everything happens locally; nothing is streamed anywhere.

Calendar & reminders

Talk it into your calendar — and it won't let you miss the reminder.

Say "remind me to email the TA Friday at 3" in chat or by voice and Aletha books a real event. The scheduling intent is caught before the model ever sees the turn, so a confirmation always means a record actually got written. When it's time, the reminder slides into the corner over whatever you're doing — over a fullscreen app, even while Aletha is in the background — and stays there until you dismiss or snooze it. Miss one because the app was closed? It re-fires when you're back.

Study tools

Turn notes or a PDF into a quiz.

Drop in your notes or a PDF and Aletha pulls out the terms and definitions into a study guide, then generates a multiple-choice quiz from them — the right answer is the term's real definition, the distractors are other terms from the same set — so you can actually test yourself. Entirely offline.

The promise underneath all of it

It runs on your Mac. You can verify that yourself.

No account, no telemetry, no sign-in. Every feature above works with the Wi-Fi switched off. Don't take our word for it — run a network monitor and watch: nothing you say to Aletha leaves your machine. If we ever add a feature that touches the network, it will be opt-in and clearly labeled.

See it run on your own models.

Founding price: $50 through August 6, one time. Then it's $100.

Get Aletha — $50, yours for good

~~$100~~ $50 · founding price through August 6 · Mac · 14-day guarantee