Agents write plans, specs and notes as Markdown, and rewrite them while you are
away. Galley is where you read them: point it at the folders your agents write
into, and every file reads like a typeset page.
- See what changed. What an agent changed since you last read a file is
marked in the page itself — a bar in the margin, new words washed — not in a
diff. Tick changes read one by one, or the whole file at once. New and
changed files carry a dot, down to the Dock icon.
- Mark it up, hand it back. Highlight a passage, add a note, and save the
round when it is ready — or copy it all as feedback for your agent, with
the file and section of each passage.
- Or let the agent read it. The bundled
galley command and its agent
skill let Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and other agents read your feedback,
act on it, and clear what they finished.
- Made for reading. Six typefaces, nineteen themes, continuous reading
from one file into the next, a palette for files, sections, text and every
action, and a shortcut for everything.
- Paper, not an editor. Galley never writes to your files and sends
nothing anywhere — no account, no analytics. Its one request is a check
for updates, and it asks before making it.
Agents
Install the command and the skill from Settings → Agents (one click each),
then ask your agent to address my feedback in Galley — or to keep watching
for my feedback, and it picks up each round as you save it. Or use the
command yourself:
galley feedback plans/auth.md # the saved highlights and notes on a file or folder
galley feedback . --json # the same, as data
galley feedback . --wait # wait for your next save, then print it
galley feedback . --watch # print every save as it happens
galley feedback clear plans/auth.md # clear them once they are dealt with
galley help # everything else
Build it yourself
You need a Mac with Xcode, and macOS 15 or later to run the app. Swift
packages resolve on the first build; everything else is in the repo.
-
Clone the repo and open app/Galley.xcodeproj.
-
Select the Galley target → Signing & Capabilities, and pick your own
team — or Sign to Run Locally if you have no Apple developer account.
Change the bundle identifier too if you like; nothing else depends on it.
-
Build and run (⌘R), or from the terminal:
xcodebuild -project app/Galley.xcodeproj -scheme Galley -destination 'platform=macOS' build
A Debug build is its own Galley, shown as Galley (Debug) with a red DEBUG
band on its icon. It keeps its own settings and its own library
(~/Library/Application Support/Galley Debug), and installs its command as
galley-debug, so it runs beside the released app without touching its
highlights, notes or settings.
Signing a build for others
A build that other Macs open without a warning has to be signed with a
Developer ID Application certificate and notarized by Apple.
tools/release.sh does all of it — archive, sign, notarize and staple the app
and a drag-to-Applications DMG, then tag and publish a GitHub Release:
- Create the certificate: Xcode → Settings → Accounts → your team →
Manage Certificates… → + → Developer ID Application.
- Create an App Store Connect API key (Users and Access → Integrations), put
the
.p8 in ~/.appstoreconnect/private_keys/, and fill in .env from
.env.example — notarization signs in with that key.
- Install and sign in to the GitHub CLI:
brew install gh, gh auth login.
- For updates, make a Sparkle key: build once, then run
generate_keys from
Xcode's SourcePackages/artifacts/sparkle/Sparkle/bin. It keeps the key
in your keychain and prints the public half — put that in SUPublicEDKey
in app/Info.plist, and SUFeedURL to your repository's releases.
tools/release.sh 1.0.0 --local # a signed DMG in build/release/, nothing published
tools/release.sh 1.0.0 # notarized, tagged and published on GitHub Releases
Release notes come from notes/release-notes/<version>.md when it exists.
Each release carries appcast.xml, the feed Galley checks for updates.
Repository
| Path | What |
|---|
app/ | The macOS app — SwiftUI and AppKit, with a WebKit page for the typesetting |
website/ | galley.aliemir.dev: landing, privacy and support pages |
tools/ | The release script, the guide's captures, debug drivers, the icon |
notes/ | The idea, decisions and changelog |
Contributing
See CONTRIBUTING.md for choosing an issue, setting up the
app or website, checking your change, and submitting a pull request.
Licence
MIT — see LICENSE. Bundled third-party code and fonts keep their own
licences, listed in app/Galley/Reader/Web/vendor/Acknowledgements.txt.
