Tandem

An open source AI body double for people with ADHD (Kovir Labs). A friendly animated companion — Timber the Busy Beaver by default — works alongside you, helps you start, and checks in gently. Runs on local Ollama by default, or on a cloud provider you configure. See docs/SPEC.md for the product spec and CLAUDE.md for the rules every change must follow.

Status: M0 + M1 (text MVP)

Working now:

• Focus sessions with timers owned by the Rust core: pause/resume, extend, end, breaks, subtasks, quiet mode
• Check-in engine (interval, halfway, 5/2-minute heads-up, session end) with silent/gentle/conversational modes and deep-focus protection hooks
• Chat with streaming replies and LLM tool calling (native tools, with a JSON fallback for models without them)
• Providers: Ollama (local or LAN) and Anthropic; API keys only in the OS keychain
• Privacy router: image/audio requests to non-local providers are blocked in core/src/router/privacy.rs
• Crisis safety: prompt safety block plus a deterministic resource safety net
• SQLite history, settings, and profile (companion rename, tone, about-me)
• Placeholder SVG beaver with all nine states (the Rive pack isn't made yet)
• Prompt evals (pnpm evals)

Not yet: voice (M2), camera (M3), mini mode, OpenAI-compatible adapter, the .riv art, input-activity signals.

Quick start

Prerequisites: Rust (stable), Node 24 + pnpm, and the Tauri prerequisites for your OS.

pnpm install
pnpm tauri dev

Then open Settings → AI provider. For an Ollama server elsewhere on your network, enter its address (e.g. http://192.168.1.20:11434), press Find models, and tick "I control this computer" so it's treated as local for privacy rules. For Anthropic, paste an API key; it's stored in your system keychain.

Windows test install

Copy this folder to the Windows PC (a short path like C:\tandem is safest) and double-click install-windows.bat. It installs the build tools with winget (VS C++ Build Tools, Rust, Node.js, pnpm, CMake, LLVM), builds the installer, and runs it. Builds are unsigned, so SmartScreen will ask you to confirm ("More info" → "Run anyway"). Use install-windows.bat -NoInstall to only build the .exe.

Development

cargo test -p core            # Rust unit + integration tests (mock provider, no network)
cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets --all-features -- -D warnings
pnpm lint && pnpm typecheck && pnpm test
pnpm gen:ipc                  # regenerate ui/src/ipc/generated from Rust types
OLLAMA_URL=http://localhost:11434 OLLAMA_MODEL=qwen2.5:7b pnpm evals
EVAL_PROVIDER=anthropic ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=... pnpm evals

See docs/CONTRIBUTING.md and the ADRs in docs/adr/.

License

Tandem is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later (see LICENSE). We chose GPL-3.0 so the app can use the maintained Piper text-to-speech engine (ADR 0003). Character packs and voice models carry their own licenses inside each pack or model card.