Contexto AI — Desktop

A standalone Electron app version of Contexto AI: an AI clipboard panel that lives on your desktop, summoned from anywhere with a global hotkey or a small always-visible launcher button — not just inside a browser. It shares the same storage/AI design as the Chrome extension (local IndexedDB, local n-gram embeddings, multi-provider LLM client), ported to run outside the browser sandbox. 100% local storage — nothing syncs anywhere; the only network calls are to whichever LLM provider you configure, and only when you ask a question.

The Chrome extension is unaffected — this is a separate, additional app, not a replacement.

Run it

Without installing anything (once published — see below):

npx contexto-ai

From source:

cd desktop
npm install
npm start

• A small circular launcher button sits in the bottom-right corner of your screen at all times — click it to open the panel, click again to minimize it back down. Drag it anywhere you like; it remembers where you leave it.
• ⇧⌘K (Windows/Linux: Ctrl+Shift+K) and the tray icon both do the same open/minimize toggle, as backups.
• The panel itself is fully movable and resizable — drag its header to reposition it anywhere, drag any edge to resize. Both persist across restarts.
• Copy any text anywhere on your machine and it's picked up automatically (polled every ~800ms) — the same way the browser extension captures copies on web pages, but system-wide.

What's different from the Chrome extension

| | Extension | Desktop | |---|---|---| | Capture scope | Text copied on web pages | Text copied anywhere on the OS | | Storage | chrome.storage / extension IndexedDB | IndexedDB in the app's own window | | LLM fetch | Background service worker | Electron main process | | Opening it | Toolbar icon → side panel | Global hotkey or tray icon → slide-out panel |

Settings (API key, model, proxy URL) are not shared between the two — each keeps its own local config, so you'll need to enter your key in both if you use both.

Two ways to share this with other people

1. Publish to npm — the right choice for developers/technical users who have Node installed. They run one command, nothing to download manually:

cd desktop
npm login              # your own npm account — one-time
npm publish            # public by default; add --access public explicitly if npm ever asks

After that, anyone can run it with zero setup:

npx contexto-ai

npx downloads the (small, ~430KB) package on demand, which in turn pulls in Electron as a normal dependency — no global install needed. Bumping the version for updates: npm version patch (or minor/major) then npm publish again.

The bin/contexto-ai.js script is what makes this work — it's the entry point npx/the contexto-ai command actually runs; it spawns Electron pointed at this app, since main/index.js only runs correctly inside Electron's own runtime, not under plain Node.

2. A packaged .dmg/.exe — better for non-technical people who just want to double-click and install, no terminal required:

npm run dist

Uses electron-builder (see package.json's build field), producing desktop/dist/*.dmg / *.exe. Unsigned builds trigger Gatekeeper/SmartScreen warnings — code signing is a separate setup this repo doesn't include yet; tell recipients to right-click → Open the first time.

Project structure

desktop/
├── package.json
├── bin/
│   └── contexto-ai.js  npm/npx entry point — spawns Electron as a child process
├── main/
│   ├── index.js      Tray, global hotkey, launcher + panel windows, clipboard polling, on-disk config, IPC
│   ├── llm.js         Multi-provider LLM client + RAG orchestrator (ported from src/background/index.js)
│   └── preload.js      contextBridge — the only door between the renderer and Node/Electron
├── renderer/
│   ├── index.html / index.css / index.js   Main panel UI (adapted from src/sidepanel/*)
│   ├── launcher.html / launcher.js          The bottom-right launcher button
│   ├── db.js            IndexedDB layer (copied from src/shared/db.js)
│   ├── embed-engine.js   Local embedder (copied from src/offscreen/embed-engine.js)
│   ├── security.js        Sensitive-data redaction (copied from src/shared/security.js)
│   └── constants.js
└── build/               App/tray icons

main/llm.js and renderer/{db,embed-engine,security}.js are intentionally copies, not shared imports — there's no build step linking the two apps together. If you fix a bug in one, check the file with the same name on the other side.