Manifold

Manifold is a native macOS permission layer for doing real work with Claude and Codex: drafts, contracts, briefs, emails, meeting notes. You choose the files and messages they can see. Manifold routes that access through a local runtime, records what crossed the boundary, and keeps versions you can roll back.

Site: spatialduality.com/manifold.

Download

Public builds are distributed from GitHub Releases.

Manifold is a native macOS app. Release builds are Developer ID signed, notarized, and updated with Sparkle.

Focus update

Based on feedback from alpha testers, Manifold is adopting a Focus-first naming and layout scheme. A Focus is a saved bundle of folders, mailboxes, per-file decisions, and runtime settings for a specific job, such as reviewing a contract or preparing a brief.

The Work pane is becoming Focus, the sidebar is becoming the Focus picker, and switching Focuses swaps the active Claude/Codex access state in one click. We plan to make this Focus-first layout live for the public during the week of May 4, 2026.

What it gives you that the AI apps don't

• Task-specific Focuses. Save the exact files, mailboxes, and settings for a job, then switch Claude or Codex into that context without rebuilding permissions from scratch.
• Multi-inbox. Apple, Google, Microsoft 365, IMAP. All in one view. None shared with any AI by default.
• Version history per file. AI edits your brief; you see the diff and can roll back from any new chat, even on a different AI.
• An AI-usage audit log that's yours to keep. What each AI read, what it changed, when. Lives on your Mac, independent of which AI did the work.
• On-device PII redaction. OpenAI Privacy Filter running on MLX. Catches 2FA codes, addresses, names, and account numbers before they leave the device.

Architecture

Manifold is split into a SwiftUI app, a local XPC runtime, and thin MCP/CLI clients. Claude and Codex talk to manifold-mcp; the runtime verifies the caller, resolves policy, runs local privacy checks, and records the exposure before returning data.

SwiftUI app -> AppRuntimeClient -> ManifoldXPC -> ManifoldAgent -> ManifoldRuntime -> stores
manifold-mcp / manifold-cli ----------------------^

The app does not open the local stores directly. Runtime behavior goes through the XPC boundary. Manifold is not a global sandbox; it governs the traffic routed through its MCP server.

See ARCHITECTURE.md for the longer one-page overview.

Build from source

Requirements:

• macOS 26.0 or later
• Xcode 26.0 or later
• Swift 6
• Apple Silicon Mac

Package build and tests:

swift build
swift test

App build:

xcodebuild -project Manifold.xcodeproj \
           -scheme Manifold \
           -configuration Debug \
           -derivedDataPath /tmp/manifold-derived-data \
           build CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO

Run locally:

bash scripts/build_and_run.sh

Contributing

Read CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request. Report vulnerabilities through the private channels in SECURITY.md, not public issues.

Release notes live in CHANGELOG.md.

Native

Swift, SwiftUI, XPC, launchd, Keychain, SQLite. Apple Silicon. Apache 2.0. The Mac is the runtime.

License

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENSE.