OpenFolks
OpenFolks is a free, open-source desktop app for working with a team of AI agents. You create folks, give each one a model, a working folder and a computer, assign them work in a chat window, and review what they did. Your conversations and files are stored on your own computer.
Features
Folks
- A folk is a long-lived teammate with its own instructions, model, voice, working folder, memory, tools and computer.
- Each conversation with a folk is a task, with its own transcript, approvals, costs and state.
- Send a message while a folk is busy and it is queued; supported engines can also be steered mid-turn.
- Edit, branch, rewind, pin, reply to and export any conversation.
Rooms and crews
- Put several folks in one room to share a brief and hand work to each other.
- Install a ready-made crew from the Marketplace: Dev Crew, Job Search, Sales Pipeline, Research Desk or Content Studio.
Computers
- Run a folk on your own computer (an explicit opt-in, chosen per folk), in an isolated Local VM through Docker or Podman, on a hosted cloud computer, or on a server you own over SSH.
- Watch a folk work through a live preview, and take over where the backend supports it.
Routines and webhooks
- Run a task once, on selected weekdays, or when a webhook arrives.
- Every run starts with fresh context and leaves a receipt.
Memory and voice
- Each folk keeps plain-text memory that you can read, edit and delete.
- Spoken replies and per-folk voices through ElevenLabs; on macOS, on-device dictation and call mode.
Connected apps and tools
- Connect Gmail, GitHub, Slack, Notion and many other services, with several labelled accounts per service.
- Attach your own tools through MCP.
Oversight
- Risky actions appear as approval cards in the conversation.
- Backstage shows the live record of each turn: tool calls, requests and errors.
- Per-task token and cost visibility.
Engines
- Folks run through the agent tools you already use, such as Claude and Codex, or through a local model.
Data is stored in ~/.openfolks. Set OPENFOLKS_DATA_DIR to use another location.
Download
Installers are published on the latest release.
The installers are not signed with an Apple or Microsoft certificate, so your system asks you to confirm the first time you open the app:
- Windows: in SmartScreen, choose More info, then Run anyway.
- macOS: after copying the app to Applications, run
xattr -cr /Applications/OpenFolks.app, or right-click the app and choose Open.
- Linux: install the package with
sudo apt install ./OpenFolks-amd64.deb.
Each release includes SHA256SUMS.txt so you can check your download.
License
OpenFolks is released under the MIT License. Third-party notices are in NOTICE.
