Macsist - Explain anything you select on your Mac — local & private

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Most AI helpers live in a browser tab: you copy, paste, switch windows, and send everything you read to the cloud. Macsist lives in your Mac's menu bar instead. Select any text or drag-select a screen region, press a hotkey, and a concise explanation streams into a glass panel right by your cursor: without ever stealing focus. It runs on a local or any OpenAI-compatible API. No cloud required, no Electron.

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Hey Product Hunt! šŸ‘‹ I read a lot of dense material — papers, foreign-language docs, error messages — and I was tired of the same loop: highlight, copy, switch to a chatbot tab, paste, wait, switch back. It broke my focus every time, and I wasn't thrilled about sending everything I read to the cloud. So I built Macsist: a native macOS menu-bar app that explains whatever I've selected — or a region of my screen — right where I'm looking, with a single hotkey. It streams into a small glass panel by the cursor and never steals focus from what I'm doing. Two things mattered most to me: • Local & private — it runs on a local MLX model on Apple Silicon, fully offline. (You can also point it at any OpenAI-compatible API if you prefer.) • Native, not Electron — Liquid-Glass panel, follow-up chat, searchable history, and 6-language support (UI + answers, with auto-translation for foreign text). It's open source, and it's my attempt at "AI that fits into how you already work" instead of yet another tab. I'd love your feedback — especially on what you'd want it to explain next. šŸ™