Familiar: Invite AI to sit next to you.

Familiar turns everything on your screen and clipboard into context for your existing AI.

Free, open source, and offline. Nothing leaves your machine.

Website

looksfamiliar.org

Where Familiar writes data

• Settings: ~/.familiar/settings.json
• Captured still images: <contextFolderPath>/familiar/stills/
• Extracted markdown for captured still images: <contextFolderPath>/familiar/stills-markdown/
• Clipboard text mirrors while recording: <contextFolderPath>/familiar/stills-markdown/<sessionId>/<timestamp>.clipboard.txt
• Before still markdown and clipboard text are written, Familiar runs rg-based redaction for password/API-key patterns. If the scanner fails twice, Familiar still saves the file and shows a one-time warning toast per recording session.

Build locally

git clone https://github.com/familiar-software/familiar.git
cd familiar/code/desktopapp
npm install
npm start

Create local macOS build artifacts:

npm run dist:mac

npm run dist:mac* includes npm run build:rg-bundle, which prepares code/desktopapp/scripts/bin/rg/* and packages it into Electron resources at resources/rg/.

build-rg-bundle.sh downloads official ripgrep binaries when missing (or copies from FAMILIAR_RG_DARWIN_ARM64_SOURCE / FAMILIAR_RG_DARWIN_X64_SOURCE if provided). The binaries are generated locally and are not committed.

Contributing

Microcopy source of truth

• User-facing app microcopy is centralized in src/microcopy/index.js.
• Update copy there instead of editing scattered strings across tray/dashboard modules.

For development contributions:

npm test
npm run test:unit:timed
npm run test:modelProviderTests
npm run test:e2e

Open a PR with a clear description, tests for behavior changes, and any relevant README/docs updates.