Snotra Agent

An open-source desktop agent built around your folder: always in view. Cloud or local models, no account, no telemetry.

Download · User manual · Website · Why Snotra? · Build from source · Deutsch

Snotra Agent is the desktop app of the Snotra AI platform. Until October 2026 the app itself was called Snotra AI — see Old versions in the manual.

Works with OpenAI · Anthropic · Google Gemini · Ollama · any OpenAI-compatible API (LM Studio, MLX-LM, llama.cpp, vLLM, OpenRouter …)

Extensible with Agent Skills (SKILL.md) · MCP servers (local or over Streamable HTTP) · built-in workspace tools · any CLI on your machine

Runs on macOS (Apple Silicon) · Windows (x64) · Linux (x64)

Status: a personal open-source project — no company behind it, no paid tier. Interfaces and configuration may still change.

Using Snotra? The user manual explains how to install it, connect a model, chat, stay in control of what it may do, and adapt it — step by step, with screenshots. This page is the overview and the developer part.

How it behaves

• The folder is the workspace. You open one folder; the file tree stays in view, and the chat works inside it. Files the agent writes show up as it writes them.
• It asks before it acts. In the default mode, Smart, reading runs without asking; changing a file or touching a sensitive one asks first. Running commands is switched off until you switch it on, and then every command gets its own approval card.
• Auto is your decision, not the default. The Auto mode drops the questions — workspace boundaries, blocks and the protection of Snotra's own keys stay. You switch it on deliberately, for one chat or as the default of a folder you trust.
• You see what it has. A pill next to the model counts the skills that are on in the chat; its list shows every skill and tool, what is missing and why, and leads to the setting. The model reads the same list instead of guessing. When a skill or tool that is off would help, it can suggest switching it on for the chat — on a card you accept or decline; your settings stay as they are.
• Your models, your keys. Cloud and local models sit side by side in one list; you switch per conversation. Keys are stored with the operating system's encryption. Next to the token counter, each chat shows what it has cost so far — an estimate from a price table that ships with the app and is only updated when you ask for it.
• Nothing phones home. No account, no server of ours, no telemetry — not even opt-in.

Download

Get the latest release from the releases page:

System	File
macOS (Apple Silicon)	Snotra-Agent-<version>-mac-arm64.dmg
Windows (x64)	Snotra-Agent-<version>-win-x64.zip
Linux (x64)	.deb (recommended), .AppImage or .tar.gz — see Install Snotra Agent

• macOS: the app is signed with a Developer ID and notarised by Apple (#662). Open the DMG, drag the app into Applications and start it — macOS only asks once whether you want to open an app downloaded from the internet.
• Windows: since 1.27.2, Snotra Agent.exe is signed in the developer's name (#911). The certificate is new, so SmartScreen may still warn on first launch until it has built up a reputation. Unzip, start Snotra Agent.exe, check that the publisher reads Konrad Krafft, then More info › Run anyway.

Why Snotra?

Open source, any model, MCP and Skills are what every agent desktop offers by now. What Snotra does differently is how it works in your folder and how carefully it acts there. Compared as of September 2026 — the field moves fast, corrections welcome.

• Goose — the closest open-source match, and a good tool. Goose runs autonomously by default; Snotra starts with command execution switched off and asks before every command. There is no session-wide "allow" for commands, unless you switch the whole app to Auto. Goose's usage data is opt-in; Snotra has none to opt into.
• Claude Desktop / ChatGPT desktop — polished, and they sandbox well. But they require an account and a subscription, they are tied to one vendor, and local models are an afterthought.
• LM Studio (Bionic) — excellent for running local models, with native MLX. But the agent is closed source, and its cloud is LM Studio's own, so there are no OpenAI, Anthropic or Google models. Snotra uses LM Studio as one provider among several and treats cloud and local models the same.
• Jan — open source and local-first. Its folder agent and its sandbox are in nightly/preview builds; the stable app is a chat client with MCP.
• Cherry Studio — very feature-rich and close in scope. Analytics are on by default, and it documents no sandbox for agent commands.
• AnythingLLM — built for chatting with your documents (RAG). Its skills are NodeJS code, not text files, and it has no shell tool.
• Open WebUI / LibreChat — self-hosted web apps with logins and Docker: a server for a team, not a desktop agent working in your folder.
• Msty — closed source. Its agent mode wraps cloud coding CLIs rather than running its own agent on your models.
• VS Code + Copilot/Cline, Cursor — they have the file tree because they are code editors. Snotra keeps the folder in view without being an IDE, for work that isn't code.

What Snotra doesn't have yet: a sandbox on Windows (on macOS and Linux, commands and Python run isolated — see Run commands in the sandbox), and OAuth sign-in for remote MCP servers — they connect with an API key or token in a header.

Motivation

A word from the author. I started out wanting to understand agentic work — what actually travels between a language model and an agent harness — and the experiment kept growing because trying out one more capability is fun. Cursor, Claude Code and ChatGPT are the obvious role models, but each concentrates on its own models. An agent desktop that lets you attach any model you like — local ones above all — is what kept me working on this.

It is also meant as a foundation: a tool developers can use to try agentic working for themselves, and to build agents for specific use cases — in a business department or at home — on top of its agent harness. The architecture is cut so that the backend can be separated from the frontend.

The name comes from Norse mythology: Snotra is the goddess of wisdom and prudence — an assistant that knows the context of its workspace and acts deliberately.

Current state & planning

What is open lives on the GitHub project board and in GitHub Issues. What the app can do today is described in the user manual. Want to contribute? See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Tech stack

• Electron (main + renderer + preload)
• Electron Forge for packaging and makers (DMG / ZIP / DEB / AppImage)
• Vanilla JS in the renderer plus marked and DOMPurify for Markdown
• @fontsource/inter as the typeface

Requirements

• Node.js ≥ 24 (Active LTS, see .nvmrc; with nvm: nvm use)
• npm (ships with Node)
• macOS, Windows or Linux
• Optional: an API key for OpenAI / Anthropic / Google, a local Ollama, or any other server with an OpenAI-compatible interface (LM Studio, llama.cpp, vLLM, OpenRouter, a corporate gateway — see Connect a model)

Build from source

# Clone the repository
git clone [email protected]:<your-user>/snotra.git
cd snotra

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Start the app in development mode
npm start

On first start you can pick a provider in the settings and enter your API key. The key is stored encrypted in your operating system's user profile — it does not end up in the project folder or in the repository.

Building / packaging the app

# macOS (Apple Silicon) – DMG
npm run make

# Linux (x64) – DEB + AppImage; needs dpkg, fakeroot and mksquashfs
npm run make:linux

# Package only, without installers
npm run package         # macOS arm64
npm run package:win     # Windows x64
npm run package:linux   # Linux x64

The finished artifacts land in out/ (excluded via .gitignore).

Keyboard shortcuts

Every shortcut Snotra adds to the usual system ones — in the window, the chat input, the file tree and the dialogs — is listed in the manual under Find a keyboard shortcut.

Migrating from "Weyouze Anything"

Up to v1.0.4: on first start the app copies settings, presets, folder history and chat history from the old userData folder; the old folder stays behind unchanged as a backup. On macOS the API keys have to be entered once more, because the keychain entry of Electron's safeStorage is tied to the app name; the settings then show "enter the key again". A chat history that can no longer be decrypted as a result is preserved as chat-history.json.undecryptable-<timestamp> instead of being overwritten. A start with --user-data-dir uses the given folder as it is and copies nothing into it.

Project layout

.
├── src/
│   ├── application/     transport-agnostic application core (chat, ports)
│   │   ├── chat/        chat engine, history trimming
│   │   └── ports/       LLM, tool, preferences and other core ports
│   ├── main/            Electron main process
│   │   ├── composition/ composition root (wiring of all adapters)
│   │   ├── adapters/    port implementations (LLM, tools, storage, FS, …)
│   │   ├── ports/       infrastructure port interfaces
│   │   ├── ipc/         thin IPC handlers
│   │   ├── providers/   LLM provider implementations
│   │   ├── services/    infrastructure (storage, FS, speech, updates, presentation)
│   │   └── tools/       workspace tool registry
│   ├── preload/         secure bridge between main and renderer (bundled)
│   ├── renderer/        UI (HTML, CSS, JS) — pure presentation layer
│   └── shared/          contracts, IPC channels, shared presentation helpers
├── system-skills/       built-in system skills (one `SKILL.md` per directory)
├── test/                tests (node:test), including architecture boundary guards
├── e2e/                 smoke test against the running Electron app
├── scripts/             build helpers (vendor sync for the renderer, icon build)
├── docs/                architecture (`architecture.md`, SVG diagrams), release, security concept
├── assets/icon/         SVG sources of the app icon (macOS and Windows layout)
├── assets/readme/       demo GIF and stills for the README (light and dark)
├── icon.icns/.ico/.png  app icons for macOS / Windows / Linux, generated via `node scripts/build-icons.js`
└── package.json

Details on the layered architecture: docs/architecture/architecture.md.

Security notes

Which action asks for your approval in which mode, and what the sandbox changes:

The details are in the security concept.

• API keys are stored locally and are not passed on to third parties.
• The workspace access of the file tools is limited to the currently opened project folder. Exceptions: the read tools additionally reach the directories of the enabled skills via skill:<name>/… (see Use skills; nothing is ever written there) — and the two execution tools run_python and shell_execute do not know this boundary at all: it is not Snotra that accesses files there, but the interpreter or the shell. Both are therefore off as shipped and, outside Auto, need an approval before every run. On macOS and Linux they run in a sandbox that confines writes to the project folder and limits the network to the approved domains (see Run commands in the sandbox); on Windows they do not.
• Every tool call passes through a policy in the main process (risk class × mode, deny rules, hard boundaries); file modifications and access to sensitive files need an approval in the default mode (see See and change what Snotra may do). A tool text, a file or a skill cannot grant a permission.
• Even so: do not let the model work in folders holding sensitive data you do not want it to see.

Contributing

Build prerequisites, test commands and the branch/PR conventions are in CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

Apache License 2.0 — see LICENSE.

Copyright © 2026 Konrad Krafft.