Show HN: Gleanary – a personal knowledge library you can talk to, for macOS

A developer released Gleanary, a free, MIT-licensed, local-first personal knowledge library for macOS that lets users chat with an agentic librarian to save, research and cross-link notes. Gleanary fetches pasted links, files sources under Johnny Decimal codes, follows links inside saved material within per-source daily limits that respect robots.txt, and archives anything left unopened for 30 days. The app stores the library on the user's Mac and can run on-device via Apple Intelligence or through a ChatGPT subscription or API keys for OpenAI, Claude, Gemini or OpenRouter, with search working without any AI model.

An agentic librarian for your Mac Local-first and free. MIT licensed. Gleanary A knowledge library you can talk to. Drop a link in chat. Gleanary fetches it, cleans up the metadata, researches it and files it in your library. See how it works ↘ chat No plugins to wire together. Day-to-day knowledge work happens in chat. Say what you need, and the right specialist picks it up. Ask in plain language. Answers point to the saved passages they came from, so you can check them. Paste a link, drop in a PDF or import your bookmarks. The librarian records the source and files it under a Johnny Decimal code. Ask for a topic. With a hosted model, Gleanary searches the web, reads what it finds and returns linked notes that passed citation checks. Browse a map, a list or a graph of your notes. Search works without any AI model at all. Agents handle the grunt work: checking dead links, cross-linking notes, retrying failed captures and summarizing, on a schedule or whenever you ask. Changes to your own notes wait for your review. Gleanary follows the links you didn't get to. Gleanary follows the links inside what you save. When a creator recommends something or a paper cites it, the next piece is already on your shelf, linked back to where it came from. You decide how far it goes. Balanced Reading the creator recommends is saved automatically and linked back. Other promising links are suggested. - Reach - 1 hop - Per source - 3 saved - Saves a day - 20 Every leaf is a page from the web, and every tip is its node in your graph. Saved ones link back to the page that led to them. SavedSuggestedNoted linkIllustrative - Why rare details matterarxiv.org - Replay buffersgithub.com - Agents that know when to stopsubstack.com - Only what you save yourself. Automatic saves respect each site's robots.txt and stay inside daily limits. Set a different level for any category. Anything you leave unopened for 30 days is archived, and you can bring it back. Your notes find each other. Gleanary reads what you save, finds related items and drafts the links. You just approve them. The graph shows it all, along with the people, organizations and tools it picked out. - Found via - Saved while following a link from something already in your library. - Source provenance - A note that draws on a source you captured. - Linked notes - Related items Gleanary found and linked, once you approved. Your library stays on your Mac. Gleanary is local-first. Everything you save lives in a library on your Mac, not on a server. Apple Intelligence can do the work on-device, or you can choose a ChatGPT subscription or an API key for OpenAI, Claude, Gemini or OpenRouter.