Open-source household AI

A shared AI and memory for families and small groups.

One Maurice everyone talks to — and a memory you all build.

The server runs on your own Mac — a private wiki for each person, and it knows their books and files too.

Download server for Mac TestFlight public beta

Free & open-source  ·  Mac server  ·  iPhone & iPad native apps
No Docker, no cloud account

Chez Maurice on iPhone — a Storyteller conversation
9:41

Bedtime story about whales

Today · 8:14 PM · The Storyteller
Tell me a story about a whale who collects sounds.

Once, in the deep grey water off the coast, there lived a young whale named Brume who kept the sounds she loved in a coral chest…

the creak of a harbour at dawn
a child laughing two bays over

She never kept a sound she hadn't been given. That was the whole of her magic.

Ask the Storyteller something…
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Bring your own models Ollama (local)·Mistral·Anthropic·OpenAI
What makes Chez Maurice different

An assistant that becomes part of your team, not one that watches you.

The memory is your own Markdown — visible, scoped, and shaped by deliberate action. Here's what that buys a household.

Memory you choose — and grow

He knows exactly what you hand him.

It runs both ways, and both are deliberate. Load notes, books, files and past conversations into a chat through the composer, and watch the token budget fill — nothing else is in the room. Then write back: anything worth keeping becomes a note in the wiki, ready for next time. You don't just feed a session — you grow a memory you can see.

Load context in — a live 200k-token budget you can feel
Write notes back — they join the wiki he reads from next
All plain Markdown, in a git repo you own
léo/allergies.md
# Léo — allergies - peanuts (severe) - shellfish EpiPen in the blue bag.
a note someone writes
Context for this chat
pulled from the wiki
Léo — allergiesnote · just now 0.3k
Trip planningpast conversation 6.4k
what Maurice draws on
Together, with Maurice

Group chats — and Maurice takes the notes.

Have a real conversation with your team — a household, a project, a few friends, all in one thread. Invite Maurice in when you want him: he takes part, answers what's asked, and writes the notes — so what you decide together becomes memory instead of lost scrollback.

Several people in one thread — summon Maurice with a tap
He joins only when called, using the notes in the room
Ask him to capture a decision — it becomes a note you keep
A group chat — several household members in one thread, with Maurice summoned to answer and take notes
Kyoto trip
Marc · Paola · Léo · Maurice
M
MarcWhat's still open on the list?
L
Léocan we add the monkey park??
Léo summoned Maurice
MauriceStill open: ryokan booking and JR passes. Monkey park — added. I'll keep the running notes.
Saved to Kyoto trip — notes
One device, every mind

One iPad. Everyone's own Maurice.

Cloud chatbots assume one person per device, per login — but a household isn't built that way, and not every family wants to buy each child their own tablet. Maurice puts everyone on a single shared iPad or Mac: each member has their own conversations, notes and memories, and switching is just a tap and a PIN. The kids share a screen without sharing a brain.

Per-member history, notes and personas
Host guests — and be a guest in another household
Roles for adults, children and guests
mockup Who's here — the household member picker
Who's here?
Tap your face to continue
PPaolaadmin
MMarcstandard
LLéochild · 11
NNoéchild · 9
And more

Built like a home, not a dashboard.

Bring your history

Import your existing threads from Claude and ChatGPT — the official export .zips — so your past conversations come with you, searchable.

Many Maurices, a hat for each

Create focused personas — a homework tutor, a trip planner, a storyteller — each with its own voice, model, creativity and bound context. The hat tells a child instantly which Maurice they're talking to.

Households & guests

Run several households on one device, with guests who keep full capability but a limited reach — an explicit allow-list of people and personas.

Native apps, no Docker

Real SwiftUI apps for iPhone, iPad and Mac — and a single server process on your Mac. No container stack to assemble, no ops to keep alive.

Your models, your choice

Local models through Ollama, or Mistral, Anthropic and OpenAI in the cloud — switch per conversation, grouped by provider.

A browsable web garden

The same Markdown becomes a themeable website — private notes encrypted at rest, with four hand-made garden themes to choose from.

Get Chez Maurice

Three pieces. Start with the server.

The server is the engine — it runs on your home Mac and holds everything. The apps are how you reach it.

Start here

Chez Maurice Server

Required · macOS · notarized .app

The chat engine, the garden and your data. Runs quietly on your home Mac. Download, open, done — no build from source.

Download Server
v1.0 · Apple silicon · ~38 MB

Chez Maurice for Mac

macOS client

The full desktop experience — chat, hats, the composer, gardens and files — in a native Mac window. Pairs to your server.

Download for Mac
v1.0 · Apple silicon · ~24 MB

iPhone & iPad

via TestFlight

The same app on iPhone and iPad — built as one universal app. Join the TestFlight beta to install it on your devices.

Join the TestFlight
iOS 17+ · iPhone & iPad

How it all connects

Your apps talk to the server on your Mac over a private HTTPS link you choose.

Server on your Mac
data · garden · LLM calls
Tailscale / Cloudflare
Your devices
iPhone · iPad · Mac
The whole point
Maurice only knows what you've shown him. That limitation isn't a bug — it's the thing you can tame. He becomes yours through the relationship you build.
A father building an AI for his children · open-source · small on purpose

Why a Mac, and why no Docker

Maurice runs as one signed, notarized app on a Mac you already own — open it and it's running. No container stack to assemble, no compose file, no ops to keep alive at 2 a.m. That's a deliberate trade: a household shouldn't have to run infrastructure to own its own assistant. A Mac mini sitting quietly on a shelf is the whole deployment.

Mac-first also means the clients can be real SwiftUI apps rather than a browser tab pretending to be one. The cost is honest — if you want this on a Linux box or a NAS today, you can't yet. The server is plain Bun, SQLite and Markdown with nothing Apple-specific at its core, so a Linux build is on the table; it just isn't the thing built for the household I'm shipping to first.

Who's behind this

Maurice is made by one person — me. I started it as a household AI for my own family, on hardware I already owned, because I didn't want the people I live with to be the product. It's open-source and it's early: a solo project, shipped honestly, not a startup pretending to be bigger than it is. You'll find rough edges. You'll also find that nothing here mines you, upsells you, or phones home. — Candide

Solo-built  ·  in beta  ·  maintained in the open  ·  candide.me