AI text processing thatstays on your Mac
A native macOS menu-bar app, not another browser tab. Khint processes the text you select in place (in Notes, Slack, Jira, a doc) from one shortcut, and keeps your prompts, sessions and captures in a local database on the device. Only the selection itself is ever sent for processing.
Native beats
a tab you have to babysit
Most AI text tools ask you to leave your work: copy the paragraph, find the browser tab, paste it into a chat window, copy the answer back. Khint inverts that. It runs as a macOS menu-bar app behind one palette shortcut, and its three pillars (Agents, Capture, and Memory) are built so your prompts, your session context, and your capture history all sit locally on the device. The result is a local-first workflow: your data stays put, and only the text you highlight is sent to the model.
What runs on your Mac, and what leaves it
Five points between your keyboard and the model.
It lives in your menu bar, not a browser tab
Khint sits in the macOS menu bar and opens with one shortcut: Cmd+Shift+K. There is no web app to keep open, no tab to hunt for. Select text anywhere, summon the palette, pick an Action, and Khint pastes the result straight back into the app you were already in. The tool comes to your text instead of you carrying your text to the tool.
The transform happens in place, across every app
Because Khint pastes into the frontmost window, the same action works in Apple Notes, the Slack desktop app, a Notion doc, or a Jira description in your browser. A product owner can tighten a rough requirement in Notes, then switch to Confluence and clean a page: one keyboard reflex, no copy-into-a-chatbot round trip and no context switch out of the app where the work lives.
Your prompts and sessions stay on the device
The Actions and Packs you build, your Memorysessions, and your run history all live in a local SQLite file on your Mac. Memory is local-only (it is never synced to Khint's servers), so the compacted context that rides along with an Action to save you re-explaining yourself is data that never leaves the machine.
Capture reads the screen without a background recorder
Captureturns anything on screen (a screenshot pasted in chat, a PDF, an error dialog) into selectable text. On macOS it fires only when you ask, using the system's own screenshot UI rather than an always-on capture API, and drops the extracted text on your clipboard. Nothing is recorded in the background; the capture is a deliberate gesture you trigger from the palette.
Only the selection leaves, optionally straight from your Mac
The payload for any Action is the text you highlighted, and nothing else on screen. Prefer to keep even that off Khint's servers? Add your own Anthropic key and Actions call the model directly from your Mac. Either way, your files, clipboard history and other windows are never read. See the full security posture →
Local-first, still honest about the model
Local-first does not mean the model itself runs on your laptop: the language work is done by Claude over the network. What Khint keeps local is the part that piles up over time: the prompts you refine, the Memory of what you've been working on, and the text you capture. When you connect integrations like Atlassian or Linear, writes go one item at a time and each push is explicit, so a refined ticket reaches Jira from anywhere only when you say so. If confidentiality is your first concern, the privacy-first walkthrough spells out exactly what does and doesn't leave the device.
Common questions
Does Khint run the AI model locally on my Mac?
No, and it's worth being precise. The language model behind an Action is Claude, reached over the network, not a model running on your Mac. What is local is everything around it: your prompts (Actions and Packs), your Memory sessions, your capture history, and your action history all live in a local SQLite database on the device. Each run sends only the text you selected to the model and pastes the result back. So the workflow and your data stay on your machine even though the model itself is in the cloud.
Which Mac apps does it work inside?
Any app where you can select text. Khint lives in the menu bar and pastes results into whatever window is frontmost, so the same shortcut cleans up a paragraph in Apple Notes, rewrites a message in the Slack desktop app, or tightens a description in a Jira or Confluence tab in your browser. You never move the text into a separate chatbot window: it is processed in place. Khint ships for macOS and Windows.
Do I need an internet connection to use it?
Your on-device parts work offline: Memory sessions, stored Packs and Actions, and your local history are all readable without a connection. AI Actions and Capture (OCR) need a connection because the model that transforms or reads the text runs in the cloud. When you're offline you can still start a session and organise your prompts; the AI step resumes the moment you're back online.
Can I keep the model call off Khint's servers entirely?
Yes, with bring-your-own-key. Add a personal Anthropic API key in Settings and it is stored in the macOS Keychain; with a key present, AI Actions call Anthropic directly from your Mac instead of routing through Khint's proxy. Prefer the default? The managed proxy works out of the box and still only ever receives the text you selected, plus, if you opted in, a short compacted summary of your active Memory session. BYOK is Anthropic-only today.
Text processing that lives where you work
Free with 10 AI actions and 5 captures per day. No credit card. Native menu-bar app, local-first storage.