Mancia

Select text in any Mac app and press a shortcut. Mancia rewrites the text with GitHub Copilot CLI and puts it back in the same place. There is no chat window and no copy and paste.

• The ribbon opens next to your selection: below or above short text, beside a tall block. With no room, it opens under the menu bar or the window title bar.
• Two action sets. Prompt is for text you write to coding agents. Writing is for text you write to people. Press ⌘E to switch.
• Custom runs your own instruction, for example "make it formal".
• Oops is optional and off by default. It fixes text typed in the wrong keyboard layout (English or Hebrew), then switches your layout. It runs on your Mac and sends nothing to Copilot. Turn it on in Settings → Editing.
• Mancia pastes only when it can confirm the field and the original text. If it cannot, it keeps the result for you to copy.
• ⌘Z or Undo restores the previous version that Mancia applied. Mancia never sends a blind Undo to the app.
• Mancia puts your clipboard back after each edit. If you copy something while an edit runs, your copy stays.
• No telemetry, no Dock icon, and no direct calls to an AI API.

Install

Download the latest .dmg from Releases, open it, and drag Mancia to Applications.

Or build it from source. Mancia is a Swift package. It has no Xcode project.

git clone https://github.com/peteriz/mancia.git
cd mancia
make app && open build/Mancia.app

[!NOTE] Release builds are not notarized. If macOS does not open the app, right-click it in Finder and choose Open. Or run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Mancia.app. Apps that you build yourself open normally.

Set up

1. Install GitHub Copilot CLI and sign in. Copilot CLI does the editing. It needs Node.js 22 or later and a Copilot subscription.

npm install -g @github/copilot
copilot   # then follow the /login prompt

[!TIP] If Mancia cannot find copilot, run which copilot. Paste the full path into Settings → Advanced → Copilot path.

2. Give Accessibility permission. Mancia needs it to copy your selection and paste the result. Press the shortcut once, then turn on Mancia in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility. Development builds are ad-hoc signed, so macOS asks again after each rebuild.

Use it

1. Select text in any app.
2. Press ⌃⌥⌘E.
3. Click an action. It runs immediately.

Set	Actions
Prompt	Improve makes a request clear. Sharpen turns rough notes into instructions. Plan first asks the agent for a short plan with goals and checks before it starts. Tighten removes words but keeps every requirement.
Writing	Proofread fixes spelling and grammar only. Unslop removes AI-writing patterns and filler. STE rewrites in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English. Markdown formats notes as GitHub-flavored Markdown.

Mancia remembers the last set you used. For other edits, click Custom, type an instruction, and press Return or click Run.

The target label shows Selection or Document. With no selection, Mancia asks before it reads the whole document and sends it to Copilot. After you approve, the result replaces the document. Press ⌘Z to go back.

Mancia pastes plain text. Bold, links, and other rich-text styles can be lost.

Key	Action
⌃⌥⌘E	Open the ribbon (change it in Settings)
1 to 4	Run the four actions of the current set
5	Open Custom. In the Custom field, digits are normal text.
6	Run Oops, when it is turned on in Settings
⌘E	Switch between the Prompt and Writing sets (change it in Settings → Editing)
⌘T	Switch between the selection and the whole document
Return	Use the focused control, or run Custom. Approval buttons need focus first.
⌘Return	Run the current action
Tab / ⇧Tab	Move to the next / previous control
⌘Z	Undo typing in Custom. Otherwise, restore the previous Mancia version.
⌘⇧Z	Redo typing in Custom
⌘A / ⌘X / ⌘C / ⌘V	Edit text in the Custom field
⌘,	Open Settings
Esc	Stop a request, decline an approval, or collapse an open result. Otherwise, close the ribbon.
⌘W	Close the ribbon

Settings has the global shortcut, the action-set shortcut, what happens after an edit, and launch at login. Advanced has the Copilot model, reasoning effort, CLI path, and working color. Installed means that the CLI starts. Mancia checks sign-in when you run an action. The recommended model is the fast, low-cost choice. It is not a claim about edit quality.

Privacy

Mancia has no analytics or telemetry and never calls an AI API directly. It gives your text and instruction to the local copilot process. That process can send them to GitHub Copilot services. Mancia uses the clipboard to read and replace text, then restores it unless you copied something newer.

Report a vulnerability through the security policy.

Website

The landing page is in site/. GitHub Pages deploys it from main. See the Pages guide.

Contributing

Read the contributing guide and the Code of Conduct. Then open an issue or a pull request.

make build   # debug build
make test    # unit tests
make run     # build the .app and open it
make rerun   # quit, reset Accessibility, rebuild, and relaunch
make shot    # redraw docs/assets/mancia-ribbon.png

The action-quality examples are synthetic. CI does not send them to Copilot. To test the configured model yourself:

node scripts/evaluate_action_quality.mjs
node scripts/evaluate_action_quality.mjs downstream-plan-request

Each case sends one request through Copilot. The script checks that literal values survive and prints the result with review criteria. You must still check meaning, uncertainty, and completeness yourself.

If you change capture or replacement, test in TextEdit and in a browser text field or VS Code. Copy something while an edit runs, change the field or document, edit the text before the result arrives, cancel before the paste, and try Undo after a manual edit. In each case, Mancia must keep the result to copy. It must never overwrite text that it cannot verify.

Copilot CLI is the only provider today. Add new providers in Sources/Mancia/Providers. See Architecture for how the parts fit together and the Changelog for each release.

License

MIT