{"slug": "show-hn-clippy-the-office-assistant-on-the-macos-desktop", "title": "Show HN: Clippy, the Office Assistant, on the macOS Desktop", "summary": "René Coignard released Clippy, a Rust-based open-source project that brings the Microsoft Office Assistant character to the macOS desktop, licensed under GPLv3 or later. The repository builds a native Clippy.app via `cargo xtask bundle`, with a `--universal` flag producing a binary for both Apple silicon and Intel Macs, and Clippy's plugins are platform-independent so non-macOS systems can run `cargo test --workspace --exclude clippy-macos`. The Clippit character, its animations and sounds, and the MS Sans Serif typeface remain © Microsoft and are excluded from the license, and Coignard states all tests in the repository were written with Claude Code and are not covered by the GPL.", "body_md": "\n\n```\ngit clone https://github.com/coignard/clippy\ncd clippy\ncargo xtask bundle\ncp -R target/release/Clippy.app /Applications/\n```\n\n`cargo xtask bundle` prints where it put the app. With `--universal` it builds one that runs on both Apple silicon and Intel Macs, which needs both Rust targets:\n\n```\nrustup target add aarch64-apple-darwin x86_64-apple-darwin\ncargo xtask bundle --universal\ncargo test --workspace\n```\n\nClippy itself and its plugins do not depend on macOS, so on other systems leave the shell out:\n\n```\ncargo test --workspace --exclude clippy-macos\n```\n\nThe [Clippy](https://github.com/coignard/clippy) source code is © 2026 René Coignard and licensed under the [GNU General Public License v3.0 or later](https://github.com/coignard/clippy/blob/main/LICENSE).\n\nThe Clippit character, its animations and sounds, and the MS Sans Serif typeface are © Microsoft and are not covered by this license.\n\nAll tests in this repository were written with Claude Code and are not covered by the GPL license.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-clippy-the-office-assistant-on-the-macos-desktop", "canonical_source": "https://github.com/coignard/clippy", "published_at": "2026-10-20 07:39:18+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-20 07:46:51.815479+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["developer-tools", "ai-tools"], "entities": ["René Coignard", "Clippy", "Microsoft", "Claude Code", "macOS", "Rust"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-clippy-the-office-assistant-on-the-macos-desktop", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-clippy-the-office-assistant-on-the-macos-desktop.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-clippy-the-office-assistant-on-the-macos-desktop.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-clippy-the-office-assistant-on-the-macos-desktop.jsonld"}}