Your AI Agents Deserve a Contact List, Not a Terminal
You've probably got Claude or Codex running somewhere on your machine, and you've probably got a terminal window with a scrollback buffer full of agent output you'll never read again. What if those agents lived in your chat sidebar instead—each one with a name, a personality, and a job? That's the idea behind OpenMausBot, an open-source project that turns local Claude and Codex agents into chat contacts you talk to like people.
What It Does
OpenMausBot is a desktop app (Electron, built with TypeScript and React 19) that runs on macOS, Windows, and Ubuntu. Every bot in the sidebar is a real agent—Claude or Codex running locally under the hood—with its own personality, its own model, its own cloud computer, and its own connected apps. You talk to them like contacts, watch them work, and approve what matters.
The project positions itself as an open-source alternative to Grok Bot, and also names Meta Muse, OpenAI dots, and Cue by Manus as the commercial products it's inspired by. The pitch is bring-your-own-agent, local-first, running on the models you already have. It's an independent project (formerly called OpenGrokBot, also known as MausBot) and isn't affiliated with xAI, Meta, OpenAI, or Manus.
Why It's Cool
The chat metaphor is doing real work here. Most agent tooling treats conversation as an interface to a task—you type a prompt, you get output, you close the window. OpenMausBot leans into the idea that persistent, named agents with distinct personalities are easier to reason about than a single generic assistant. If you've ever wanted a "research bot" and a "code review bot" that don't bleed into each other, this is that structure made literal.
Each bot gets its own everything. Per the README, every agent has its own personality, model, cloud computer, and connected apps. That's a meaningful separation—you're not just switching system prompts, you're giving each contact a distinct working environment. It maps well to how people actually delegate: different collaborators, different contexts.
Local-first, bring-your-own-agent. The agents run locally under the hood on the models you already have. There's no implied subscription or hosted model requirement in the README—you bring Claude or Codex, OpenMausBot gives it a face and a chat window.
Approval as a first-class concept. "Approve what matters" suggests a human-in-the-loop checkpoint rather than full autonomy. For anyone who's watched an agent confidently do the wrong thing, having a gate before consequential actions is the difference between a tool you trust and one you babysit.
It ships like a real desktop app. Signed and notarized macOS builds for both Apple silicon and Intel, a Windows x64 installer, and a Ubuntu 24.04 .deb (with an AppImage beta). That's more distribution polish than a lot of open-source desktop projects bother with.
How to Try It
The fastest path is a prebuilt binary from the latest release:
- macOS (Apple silicon): download
OpenMausBot.dmg—signed and notarized. - macOS (Intel): download
OpenMausBot-intel.dmg. - Windows: download
OpenMausBot-setup.exe(x64 installer). - Ubuntu 24.04 x64: grab the
.debor the AppImage beta.
You can also browse all releases if you need an older version. Once installed, you'll configure your local Claude or Codex agents and they'll show up as contacts in the sidebar.
The source lives at github.com/milind-soni/openmausbot—it's TypeScript-strict with React 19 and Electron, and PRs are welcome. There's also a project site at openmausbot.com, including a comparison writeup against Grok Bot if you want the side-by-side.
Final Thoughts
OpenMausBot is best suited to developers who already run local agents and want a more organized, persistent way to interact with them—especially if you like the idea of distinct agents for distinct jobs rather than one omnibus assistant. It's an opinionated bet that chat contacts are a better mental model than terminal sessions, and the per-agent isolation (model, computer, apps) is what makes that bet credible. If you're curious, the download is a single installer away, and the codebase is open if you'd rather see how the pieces fit before committing.
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