Free Your Thoughts

A native macOS document reader for reading, annotating, and thinking with AI — entirely offline and private.

Beta — under active development

What it does

FreeThoughts is a local-first reading companion. Open a PDF, Markdown, or plain text file, select passages, take notes, and get AI-generated "provocations" that challenge and extend your thinking — all without sending a single byte off your machine.

Features

• Completely offline — AI runs on-device via Apple Foundation Models. No API keys, no cloud, no internet required after install.
• Private by design — all documents, notes, and AI interactions stay on your Mac. Nothing is transmitted to external services.
• Local storage — notes and provocations persist in a local SwiftData database across app restarts.
• Document reading — clean two-pane reader for PDF, Markdown, and plain text files. Open via menu, keyboard shortcut, or drag-and-drop.
• Anchored notes — select text and attach notes to specific passages. Notes appear in a collapsible sidebar ordered by document position. Click a note to jump back to its anchor.
• AI provocations — select text or a note and choose a provocation style (Challenge, Expand, Simplify, Question) to get a short, thought-provoking AI response streamed in real time.
• Free software — GPLv3.

Requirements

• macOS 26.0+ (Tahoe) with Apple Silicon for AI features
• Xcode 16.0+ to build from source

Build and run

cd macos-native
open FreeThoughts.xcodeproj
# Or build from the command line:
xcodebuild -project FreeThoughts.xcodeproj -scheme FreeThoughts -configuration Debug build -skipMacroValidation

TCA (The Composable Architecture) is the only external dependency — add it via Xcode's Swift Package Manager if not already resolved.

Project structure

macos-native/FreeThoughts/
├── App/            # App entry point, root feature, content view
├── Features/       # TCA features (Document, Notes, Provocation)
├── Models/         # Value-type data models
├── Renderers/      # PDF, Markdown, and plain text rendering
├── Persistence/    # SwiftData container and clients
└── Resources/      # Assets and default provocation prompts

Tech stack

• Swift / SwiftUI
• The Composable Architecture (TCA)
• SwiftData for local persistence
• PDFKit for PDF rendering
• Apple Foundation Models for on-device AI

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Electron version (paused)

Early development originally used Electron. That work lives in the electron/ directory but is no longer under active development — all effort has moved to the native macOS app above.

Electron details

Tech stack

• Electron, TypeScript, Node.js
• pdf.js for PDF rendering
• SQLite for local storage
• Vitest for testing
• Zod for runtime schema validation

Run

cd electron
npm install
npm start

Test

npm test

Bundle

npm run bundle:mac

Produces Free Thoughts.app in release/Free Thoughts-darwin-arm64/.