# Omi: The Open-Source AI Wearable That Sees Your Screen and Remembers Everything > Source: > Published: 2026-11-06 00:00:00+00:00 # Omi: The Open-Source AI Wearable That Sees Your Screen and Remembers Everything The AI-wearable category is crowded with closed, cloud-locked gadgets. **[Omi by BasedHardware](https://github.com/BasedHardware/omi)** is the exception worth paying attention to: a genuinely open-source AI wearable platform, MIT-licensed, where the firmware, hardware designs, apps, and backend all live in one public repository. ## What It Is Omi is a small **necklace-style wearable** that captures conversations and pairs with apps on your phone and desktop. The platform **transcribes in real time, generates summaries and action items, and gives you an AI chat that remembers everything it has heard** — a searchable memory of your days, meetings, and ideas. Newer builds push further: the project now describes an assistant that “sees your screen, listens to your conversations, and tells you what to do.” The part that sets it apart from the Humane/Rabbit wave of devices: **everything is open.** The mobile apps (Flutter), the desktop apps (Swift/Python on macOS, Node on Windows), the backend, the firmware, and the hardware designs are all in the repo under MIT. There’s a hosted Omi Cloud with paid plans if you want turnkey, but you don’t have to use it. ## How It Fits Together The architecture is refreshingly legible: - **The Omi wearable** captures audio and talks over**Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)** to your devices. - **Desktop apps** (macOS Swift/Python, Windows Node) and a**mobile app** (Flutter, iOS/Android) relay to the backend over**HTTPS/WebSockets** . - **The backend** does the transcription, summarization, memory, and chat — and you can**self-host it** . Getting the desktop app running from source is close to trivial. On macOS it’s a single clone-and-run against the public cloud config — no env files, no credentials, no local backend needed: ``` git clone https://github.com/BasedHardware/omi.git && cd omi/desktop/macos && ./run.sh --yolo ``` Windows is an `npm install` and `npm run dev` with the bundled example config. For serious work there’s a full installation path that spins up the complete backend stack locally with `uv` and the provided `.env.template`. There’s also a browser build at [app.omi.me](https://app.omi.me) if you just want to poke at it. ## Why Open Source Is the Whole Point Here An always-listening — and increasingly always-watching — device records the most sensitive stream of data you have. For a closed gadget, you take the vendor’s word on what happens to that stream. With Omi you can: - **Audit the firmware and backend** to see exactly what’s captured, stored, and sent. - **Self-host the backend** so transcripts and the resulting memory stay on infrastructure you control. - **Own the hardware design** — the schematics are in the repo, so this is a platform to build on, not just a product to consume. For an individual, that’s a privacy posture no closed competitor can match. For a team or organization — anyone handling regulated, proprietary, or customer data — keeping capture and memory off a third-party cloud isn’t a nicety, it’s often a hard requirement. ## The Catch It’s a developer-forward platform, not a polished consumer appliance. The one-line installs are great, but the full self-hosted stack still asks you to manage a backend, keys, and updates. Battery life, transcription accuracy in noisy rooms, and the social reality of wearing a recording device are the usual open questions for this category. And always-on capture carries real consent and recording-law obligations — put a visible indicator on it and set clear policy before you wear it around others. ## The Takeaway Omi is the most credible open-source answer to the AI-wearable moment: a necklace that captures, transcribes, and remembers — with the firmware, apps, and backend fully in your hands under MIT. If you want an AI that remembers your day *and* you want to own the data pipeline behind it, this is the one to clone first. Explore it: [github.com/BasedHardware/omi](https://github.com/BasedHardware/omi) · [omi.me](https://www.omi.me/) · [docs.omi.me](https://docs.omi.me/).