What is Skuoty?
Skuoty is a lightweight desktop application that intercepts your clipboard with a double Ctrl+C and lets you instantly transform the selected text using AI — without leaving the application you are working in.
Select any text, press Ctrl+C twice, choose a transformation plugin, and get the result back in under a second. No browser tab, no copy-pasting between windows.
It lives in the system tray and stays out of your way until you need it.
Features
- Double Ctrl+C trigger — captures your selected text from any application via a global keyboard hook
- Multiple AI providers — Gemini, OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter, plus local models via Ollama (no API key required) or Unsloth Studio
- Plugin system — define your own text transformations with a simple JSON structure and prompt templates
- Encrypted sessions — all settings and API keys are stored encrypted on disk with AES-256-GCM + PBKDF2; no data is ever sent except to the AI provider you choose
- Thinking switch — turn reasoning on/off for local reasoning models (Ollama, Unsloth); off by default for fast answers
- Multi-session support — create multiple profiles, each protected by its own password
- Export / Import — back up and restore your configuration with password encryption
- Paste-back — the result is pasted directly into the original window (Windows)
- 5 languages — English, Italiano, Español, Français, Deutsch
- Light & dark theme
- Runs in the system tray — minimal footprint, always ready
Supported AI Providers
Ollama and Unsloth Studio run models fully locally, for private usage.
Unsloth Studio setup
- Start Unsloth Studio (or
unsloth run --model <model>). The console prints the server address and an API key.
- If needed, create a key in Studio → Settings → API (format
sk-unsloth-…, shown only once).
- In Skuoty, go to ⚙ Settings → AI → Unsloth and fill in:
- Base URL — usually
http://localhost:8888 (or :8000); a trailing /v1 is accepted
- API key — the
sk-unsloth-… key
- Model — press refresh to load the models from
GET /v1/models; models already loaded in memory are marked with ●
- Use model-recommended sampling — lets Unsloth apply the model's recommended temperature/top-p; turn it off to set them manually
- Thinking (reasoning) — off by default (sends
enable_thinking: false); see below
- Max tokens and Timeout — raise the timeout for large local models
- Press Test to verify the connection.
Requests to Unsloth go through Skuoty's main process, so Studio's CORS settings don't need to be changed.
Thinking (reasoning) models
Many local models — Qwen3 / Qwen3.5, DeepSeek-R1, gpt-oss, Gemma 4 — reason before answering by default. For Skuoty's tasks (translate, summarize, rewrite, fix grammar) this is rarely useful: answers get much slower, and the reasoning tokens count against Max tokens, so the answer can be cut off.
Ollama and Unsloth therefore have a Thinking switch, off by default:
- Off — the model answers directly (
think: false for Ollama, enable_thinking: false for Unsloth)
- On — useful for complex custom plugins; set Max tokens to at least 4096
- Models without thinking support work normally: if Ollama rejects the option, Skuoty retries without it
- If the token limit runs out mid-reasoning, Skuoty shows a response cut off error instead of an empty result
Installation
Pre-built binaries
Download the latest release from the Releases page.
| Platform | File |
|---|
| Windows | Skuoty-Setup-x.x.x.exe (installer) or Skuoty-x.x.x.exe (portable) |
| Linux (Debian/Ubuntu) | skuoty_x.x.x_amd64.deb |
| Linux (universal) | Skuoty-x.x.x.AppImage |
| macOS | Skuoty-x.x.x.dmg |
Linux — AppImage
chmod +x Skuoty-*.AppImage
./Skuoty-*.AppImage
Linux — deb
sudo dpkg -i skuoty_*_amd64.deb
Requirements
All platforms
- No runtime dependencies for API-based providers (Gemini, OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter)
For local AI (Ollama)
- Ollama installed and running
- At least one model pulled, e.g.
ollama pull llama3.2
For local AI (Unsloth Studio)
- Unsloth Studio installed and running, with its external API available (recent versions)
- An API key from Studio → Settings → API
Windows only
- PowerShell (required for paste-back functionality — included in all modern Windows versions)
Getting Started
- Launch Skuoty — a splash screen will ask you to create your first session
- Create a session — give it a name and a password (min. 6 characters); your settings will be encrypted with this password
- Configure an AI provider — go to ⚙ Settings → AI and enter your API key or configure Ollama / Unsloth Studio
- Select text in any application and press Ctrl+C twice
- Choose a plugin from the toolbar and wait for the AI response
- Copy or paste the result back
Plugin System
Plugins are JSON objects that define a text transformation task. They are fully user-defined.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
