Show HN: Collie – a local AI harness that runs the browser, desktop and code

Collie, a new local AI harness that runs on a user's machine, can drive the real browser, desktop, screen, and code while keeping everything private and verified. The tool, built by Collie HQ, features a coding agent with self-verifying repair loops, a Chrome extension for browser control, an ambient desktop wallpaper, screen recording, and a phone remote via an iOS companion app. Collie is terminal-first and supports editors through an open protocol, with a one-click Windows installer available on GitHub.

A coding agent that lives on your computer — and can actually run it. Local and private. It reaches your real environment — your logged-in browser, your desktop, your screen, your files — and proves its work by running it. collie.run https://collie.run · collie -p "fix the bug" · collie web Most coding agents live in a cloud tab or an editor pane and can only touch the files you hand them. Collie runs on your machine — so it works the way you already do: it drives your real logged-in browser, arranges your desktop, records your screen, takes tasks from your phone, and edits your code. Nothing leaves your computer unless you send it there; there's no account and no telemetry. And it doesn't just claim to be done. When Collie fixes something it writes a reproduction that must fail on the broken code, makes the smallest edit that flips it, and re-runs the assertion — a run isn't "done," it's verified ✓ . It's local, and it reaches your real world. A cloud agent can read a repo. Collie can open the site in the browser you're already logged into, click through the actual flow, watch what happens on your screen, and change the code — all on one machine, all under your control. That's a different class of task: not "edit these files," but "get this working, end to end." The range is the proof. Collie isn't a coding agent with a pile of unrelated features bolted on. The breadth below — the desktop console, the browser control, the screen recorder, the phone remote — is there because Collie's coding agent built all of it. The features are the benchmark: a harness strong enough to ship its own desktop app and iOS companion is strong enough for your bug. | Capability | What it means | | |---|---|---| | 🧠 | Coding agent | Semantic code navigation, syntax-gated edits, and a self-verifying repair loop — the core, covered below. | | 🌐 | Your real browser | A Chrome extension lets Collie act in your logged-in browser — the real session, real cookies — so it can operate sites, not just scrape them. Every action is a fenced, CSRF-checked localhost call. | | 🖥️ | Living desktop | collie web powers an interactive ambient wallpaper: clock, weather, an app dock, projects, a music player real audio + synced karaoke lyrics , and a command bar — all agent-manageable via one JSON config. When Collie is working, the wallpaper becomes a live star-map of your code. | | 🎬 | Screen recorder | collie record captures screen + camera + mic Windows and macOS — a built-in way to demo or document a run. | | 📱 | Phone remote | Pair once by scanning a code; then tail runs and start new ones from your phone — on the same Wi-Fi --lan or anywhere through a relay --remote , with the companion iOS app. | | 🔌 | Everywhere else | Terminal, browser GUI, VS Code, and any ACP editor Zed/JetBrains/neovim — one harness, every surface. | Collie is terminal-first and reaches editors through an open protocol, not a bespoke extension: | Surface | Command | Reaches | |---|---|---| Terminal | collie TUI · collie -p "task" | anywhere — SSH, CI, tmux | Browser GUI | collie web | chat, the live verification gate, diffs, the star-map, the ambient desktop, settings | iPhone | collie web --lan same Wi-Fi or --remote anywhere, via the relay + the companion app | scan the pair code once, then run from the phone | VS Code | the bundled vscode-collie extension | Collie docked in a sidebar panel manages its own server | Editors ACP | collie acp | Zed · JetBrains · neovim · VS Code — one adapter, every | Streaming / CI collie run "task" --stream-json Windows — one click. Download Collie-Setup.exe from the latest release https://github.com/colliehq/collie/releases/latest and double-click it. A small app-style installer lays down a self-contained runtime Python + Collie + semantic memory, nothing to preinstall and opens Collie in a native desktop window. On first launch you pick a brain — an existing Claude, Codex, or Grok login is detected and connects in one click; or paste an API key. macOS / Linux — pip. The core is stdlib-only, so the base install is tiny: pip install -e ". local,dev " from a clone PyPI publish is planned collie setup optional deps, pre-download the memory model, pick a provider collie the terminal chat TUI opens No account, no telemetry, and the core has zero third-party dependencies — mock and ollama run without any key, and memory works out of the box on BM25 keyword recall. Optional extras: pip install ". local,tui,search " — local semantic memory: granite-107m via onnxruntime, ~55MB, multilingual , tui rich terminal chat , search keyless web search , acp editor protocol , browser Playwright — only for collie browser-bridge --browser , a managed Chromium with the extension preloaded, for CI or when you'd rather not use your own Chrome . Per-OS setup — especially the real-browser bridge collie browser-bridge + harness/browser ext/ — is in docs/PLATFORMS.md . collie terminal chat TUI ; first run picks a provider collie web browser GUI — chat, live gate, diffs, star-map, ambient desktop collie selftest $0 deterministic end-to-end mock model, real tools + memory a real cheap model provider key in env DEEPSEEK API KEY=... collie -p "fix the off-by-one in utils/timeparse.py" machine-readable / streaming collie run "fix the bug" --json final result object tokens, cost, verified collie run "fix the bug" --stream-json live NDJSON: tool · edit · repro-gate · receipt fully local, no key collie run "summarize app.py" --provider ollama --model qwen2.5-coder:7b autonomous loop: iterate toward the goal, STOP the first turn an executed check goes green collie loop --goal "get the suite passing" --until "pytest -q" --max 8 best-of-N with EXECUTION-based selection: run N isolated attempts, keep only what passes collie pack "fix the failing test" -n 3 --check "pytest -q" --apply collie acp serve as an ACP agent an editor spawns this over stdio Providers: mock , ollama , anthropic , anthropic-oauth , and OpenAI-compatible presets deepseek · qwen / dashscope · openrouter · moonshot · groq · zhipu · openai . Everything above rests on a small, honest harness. This is what's under it. locate code search "parse duration compound units" · 4 hits › utils/timeparse.py:42 parse ············· 0.91 repro wrote repro.py · assert parse duration "1h30m" == 5400 ✗ FAILING › got 1800, want 5400 ← gate armed edit utils/timeparse.py ································· +1 −1 43 │- total = SECONDS unit int val 43 │+ total += SECONDS unit int val verify python repro.py ✓ PASSING › parse duration "1h30m" == 5400 ← gate green ✓ verified in 12.8s · Δ +1 −1 · 3,410 tok · $0.006 Other agents check "did the test not error." Collie's gate is stronger: the reproduction carries an assert actual == expected derived from the issue, so a plausible-but-wrong edit fails loudly and drives another repair round. This assert-verify loop is the core of the harness — a wrong edit never silently ships as "done." The same idea scales up: collie loop stops when a real shell check exits 0, and collie pack picks the best of N attempts by what actually passes. ┌──────────────── loop.Harness ────────────────┐ task ─────────────▶│ compose → complete → run tools → verify ✓ │ └──┬──────────────┬──────────────┬─────────────┘ ┌───────────────────┘ │ └───────────────────┐ ▼ ▼ ▼ ContextComposer ModelProvider ToolRegistry STABLE/CONTEXT/VOLATILE OpenAI-compat · Anthropic · read/write/edit/bash/ + token budgeter Ollama · subscription-OAuth grep/glob + code search ▼ │ │ memory.SqliteMemory ▼ recorder.Recorder hybrid recall BM25+dense+RRF emit → stream-json / ACP runs.db + dashboard | Seam abstract base | shipped impl | |---|---| ModelProvider | OpenAICompat DeepSeek/Qwen/GLM/OpenRouter… · Anthropic · Ollama · subscription-OAuth | ToolRegistry | read/write/edit syntax-gated · bash · grep · glob · · code search + web search keyless · web fetch · plan · browser · undo MCP deferred tier + load tools | EmbeddingProvider | OnnxEmbedding granite-107m Apache, 55MB, multilingual · bge-m3 / e5 · jina-v3 opt-in · BM25-only when no model | SqliteMemory | CORE + facts + FTS5 + cosine, hybrid RRF + optional rerank + consolidation | ContextComposer | STABLE/CONTEXT/VOLATILE + auto-prefetch · a ~1K-token fixed prefix kept deliberately lean | code search extracts the identifiers from a natural-language query and greps the repo ripgrep, else grep , ranking files by how many of your terms each contains — so the agent reasons about where to edit instead of grepping blind, with no model and no index to go stale. is exact-match, whitespace-tolerant, and edit file rejects any edit that would break Python syntax . Untrusted web/page content is fenced as data prompt-injection defense , and the browser bridge refuses any request missing its CSRF header. A token/cost budget COLLIE MAX COST / COLLIE MAX TOTAL TOKENS stops a run at a ceiling.One cross-platform Python codebase — not a per-OS fork. The handful of operations that genuinely differ kill a process tree on a timeout, secure a token file, convert a path, choose a shell are isolated in harness/plat.py , so the same wheel runs everywhere. | OS | Status | Notes | |---|---|---| Linux | ✅ native | the primary target | macOS | ✅ native | POSIX; the browser bridge is simplest here Chrome + Collie on one OS | Windows | ✅ one-click | the packaged installer; the agent prefers the file/search tools over bash | WSL2 | ✅ | a Windows-Chrome ↔ WSL bridge uses the LAN IP + wslpath handled for you | Collie measures itself against other harnesses on the same task and model — you run it yourself; no numbers are asserted here: DEEPSEEK API KEY=... python swe run.py --n 5 SWE-bench Verified needs Docker python -m bench.multirun eval pass@1 / pass@k / Wilson CI / McNemar python -m bench.polyglot eval --langs python,cpp,javascript Aider-Polyglot, multi-language python -m harness.cli compare --vs all vs Claude Code / Aider / … - The benchmark harness is version-tagged and reproducible. "Progress is a number" cuts both ways — Collie surfaces the levers that turn out net-neutral , not just the wins. - Token counts are real usage the model's own usage , or harness/apitap.py metering for CLIs that report none — apples-to-apples, same source both sides. - Collie draws a personal Max/Pro subscription only through the first-party OAuth path anthropic-oauth , the same mechanism the official CLI uses; it never scrapes or resells subscription tokens. Cheap API keys and local models are the default. MIT © 2026 — see LICENSE /colliehq/collie/blob/main/LICENSE .