Mengo Desktop

A macOS app that quietly records your screen, mic, and accessibility tree on-device, then turns what you did into reusable AI skills.

Free and open source. No Mengo account, sign-in, subscription, or feature limits. Your recordings and app data stay on your Mac.

Install

Download MengoDesktop.zip from the latest GitHub release, unzip it, and move MengoDesktop.app into ~/Applications. No account or sudo is required.

To install from source:

git clone https://github.com/klole/mengo-desktop
cd mengo-desktop
./install.sh

Then grant Screen Recording and Microphone when macOS asks (System Settings → Privacy & Security).

Requirements

• macOS 15 (Sequoia) or later
• Apple Silicon (arm64)
• Xcode 16+ / Swift 6 (only if building from source — install.sh downloads a prebuilt release when one is published)
• For fully local Flow synthesis: Ollama plus the Codex CLI in OSS mode and a tool-capable local model (recommended: gpt-oss:20b); no account or API key is required
• Optional: authenticated Claude Code or Codex for cloud-backed synthesis

Mengo defaults to the fully local Ollama runtime. Claude Code and cloud Codex remain optional and may require an account or paid plan under their own terms.

What's inside

The app has five panes:

• Memory — what you've recorded today / this week / this month, top apps, recent sessions, and on-device insights
• Flow — record a demonstration, narrate what you're doing, and Mengo turns it into a Claude Code / Codex skill
• Library — your saved flows
• Studio — visually edit a saved flow's steps before re-running
• Settings — choose the synthesis runtime, configure startup behavior, and open logs or data folders

The recorder (screenpipe under the hood) runs as a child process bundled inside the app and talks to the UI on http://127.0.0.1:3030. When the app quits, the recorder gets SIGTERM.

Specs

• ~150 MB on disk (recorder binary + Parakeet ASR models bundled)
• 5–10% CPU, 0.5–3 GB RAM while recording
• ~20 GB/month of recordings (data dir: ~/.screenpipe)
• Recording, indexing, and audio transcription run on-device via Parakeet (Apple Silicon MLX).
• Local Ollama synthesis stays on-device. If you select Claude Code or cloud Codex, selected recording context is sent according to that provider's terms.

Build from source

./bootstrap-cert.sh   # one-time: self-signed cert so macOS doesn't re-prompt every rebuild
./build-mengo.sh      # produces the verified MengoDesktop.zip artifact
./install.sh          # verifies, installs to ~/Applications, and launches it

bootstrap-cert.sh is optional but recommended during development — without it, every rebuild has a new code hash and macOS re-prompts for Screen Recording permission.

Beta feedback

Open an issue on this repo or message me directly with:

• macOS version + chip
• what you tried to do
• recorder log: ~/Library/Logs/MengoDesktop/recorder.log
• app log: ~/Library/Logs/MengoDesktop/app.log

License

MIT. Bundled dependencies are listed in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.