Sidekick part 1: a terminal companion on your hardware

Description and use

Sidekick is a local terminal companion that runs on your hardware, keeping files, memory, and voice data local, offering chat, voice, and 19 tools with auditability and optional cloud integration.

Problem

AI coding assistants typically require cloud accounts, upload code, and incur API costs, exposing local files to external servers.

Outcome

Sidekick provides a deterministic, grounded local AI assistant with full control over data, auditability, and optional cloud integration, eliminating the need for cloud accounts and reducing costs.

Workflow

• Install Sidekick with "uv tool install sidekick-agent[voice]"
• Run "sk init" to guide first‑run hardware, model, and verification
• Start fullscreen chat with "sk"
• Use "sk talk" for voice input, transcribed locally
• Execute single‑shot tasks with "sk run "task"" and optional flags
• Access tools via "sk mcp" for stdio integration
• Review sessions, audit logs with "sk audit"

Evidence

Every AI coding assistant I used had the same deal: create an account, pipe your code through someone's cloud, watch the meter run.

Source

Sidekick is the opposite bet: a local-first terminal companion you talk to — chat, voice, and 19 tools — running on your own hardware.

Source

Your files, memory, and voice never leave your machine unless you hand it a key.

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One command, sk, with several surfaces sharing everything: ... Fullscreen TUI, Plain REPL, Voice, Single-shot runs, MCP server.

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Underneath: long-term memory with full-text search, todos, shell history, background daemon with calendar schedules, skill packs in SKILL.md format — and an audit ledger (sk audit) that logs every tool run, approval, and network egress so you can prove your code never leaked.

Source

Bring your own key when you want frontier models — one guided sk connect flow, a dozen providers plus any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, spend caps per session, keys chmod 600 and masked.

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