Altic
Altic builds free, open source AI software that runs entirely on your Mac. Its lineup covers voice dictation, text autocomplete, macOS automation for Claude and A/B testing, with no data leaving the device.
What is Altic?
Altic is a small studio building AI software that runs on the device, exclusively for the Mac, under the banner Amplify human brilliance. Its lineup spans five products across voice, writing, automation and the web, and everything it has shipped is free and open source.
The flagship is FluidVoice, a dictation app whose promise is that your voice never leaves your Mac. It works in three stages: you hold one hotkey and talk normally, a local speech model turns the audio into raw text, then Fluid-1, a custom-trained post-processing model also called Fluid Intelligence, strips filler, fixes casing, formats structure and matches the tone of whichever app has focus. The transcription lineup includes Nemotron Speech 3.5, Parakeet Flash, Parakeet TDT v3 and v2, Cohere Transcribe, Apple Speech and Whisper from Tiny to Large. The site claims more than 100,000 downloads, 40+ languages depending on the model, dictation roughly 3.7 times faster than typing, and perceived latency under 100 ms. It requires macOS 15.0 Sequoia, is tuned for Apple Silicon through CoreML and Metal, and still supports Intel Macs via Whisper. Post-processing can stay local with Fluid Intelligence or be routed to OpenAI, Groq or a custom provider, and three modes, Write, Command and Direct Dictation, cover different contexts.
Altic MCP is an open source Model Context Protocol server that hands Claude Desktop 64 tools across eleven macOS domains: Messages and Contacts, Notes and Reminders, Calendar, Files and Finder, Clipboard, windows and workspace, Safari, Chrome through the DevTools Protocol, screen capture, system controls and visual feedback. Pilot converts a plain-English description into a live PostHog experiment, writing and committing the feature-flag code through MorphLLM.
Two products remain announcements: FluidWrite, a Mac-native autocomplete accepted with the Tab key, and Glu, a browser copilot with contextual suggestions and a personal memory. Both are waitlist-only. FluidVoice is GPLv3 licensed from 23 February 2026 onwards; Altic MCP and Pilot are Apache-2.0.
What it does
- Dictate into any Mac text field using a single system-wide shortcut
- Transcribe speech entirely offline, with nothing sent over the network
- Rewrite dictation automatically to match the tone of the app in focus
- Drive macOS from Claude Desktop: Messages, Notes, Reminders, Calendar and Finder
- Automate Safari and Chrome sessions, including clicks, typing and data extraction
- Capture the active screen and hand the image straight back to the model
- Turn a plain-English sentence into a deployed PostHog A/B test
When to use Altic / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Altic is the right fit.
When to use Altic
- Mac users who dictate a lot and want speech turned into polished text before it lands in the app
- Developers and technical teams comfortable with Homebrew, git and a command-line setup
- Anyone bound by strict confidentiality, since audio and transcripts never leave the machine
- Claude Desktop or OpenCode users who want to drive macOS apps straight from a prompt
- Product and growth teams that want PostHog A/B tests described in plain English
When not to use Altic
- Windows, Linux and iOS users, because every product is macOS-only today
- Organisations that need signed terms, a DPA or a named legal entity to contract with
- Teams looking for commercial support, an SLA or an account manager
- Non-technical users hoping to try FluidWrite or Glu now, as both are waitlist-only
- Anyone unwilling to grant broad macOS permissions such as screen recording and Finder automation
How to use Altic
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Install FluidVoice with the Homebrew command brew install --cask fluidvoice, or download it from the site or the latest GitHub release
- Check the requirements first: macOS 15.0 Sequoia or later, on Apple Silicon or an Intel Mac
- Grant microphone access and accessibility permissions so the app can type into other applications
- Optionally add Fluid Intelligence, a local model of about 3.5 GB that needs no cloud service and no API key
- Hold the dictation hotkey and speak normally; the polished text lands in whatever field has focus
- Pick a mode between Write, Command and Direct Dictation, and set per-app prompts if you want the tone to switch automatically
- For Mac automation, install UV, clone the altic-mcp repository and run uv sync, or use npx skills add altic-dev/altic-mcp
- Test the server with uv run server.py, add its command to claude_desktop_config.json, then restart Claude Desktop
- Grant the permissions the server needs: Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, Automation, Finder Automation, Accessibility and Screen Recording
- For Pilot, supply Anthropic, PostHog and MorphLLM API keys, clone the repository, run pnpm install then pnpm dev, and open localhost:3000
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Free forever with no tiers, on the flagship app as well as on the MCP server and Pilot
- Genuinely open source and auditable: GPLv3 for FluidVoice, Apache-2.0 for Altic MCP and Pilot
- Privacy is structural rather than promised, with an explicit and unusually detailed non-collection list
- Works offline, with no account to create and no mandatory API key
- One-command Homebrew install and very low claimed latency, under 100 ms
- Broad model choice, from the fastest English-only engine to the most multilingual
- Real traction: more than 100,000 downloads claimed, public testimonials and a Homebrew formula
Cons
- macOS only, with no Windows, iOS or Linux build available
- Two of the five products, FluidWrite and Glu, are waitlist-only
- No terms and conditions, no legal notice, no named legal entity and no postal address
- No GDPR mention, no DPA, no subprocessor list and no security certification
- The site-level privacy policy documents Glu, not the flagship app, which is covered elsewhere
- Altic MCP and Pilot need a developer setup, and MCP requires very broad macOS permissions
- Support runs through a contact form and GitHub issues, with no commercial channel
Pricing & Plans
Every published Altic product is free. FluidVoice is presented as free forever with no tiers, FluidWrite carries the same wording, and Altic MCP and Pilot are distributed as open source under Apache-2.0. There is no pricing page, no paid plan and therefore no entry price, currency or billing unit to report. No free trial is offered either, since nothing is chargeable.
- the only tier
- stated on the product page as free forever with no tiers
- and covering every published Altic product
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Altic handles your data.
GDPR overview
There is no GDPR implementation to report. Across every page collected, the words GDPR and CCPA never appear. No Article 27 EU representative is designated, no data protection officer is named, no DPA is published or offered, no subprocessor list exists, and no legal basis, retention period or formal access-and-erasure procedure is described. The site carries no terms and conditions and no legal notice, and names no legal entity beyond a footer copyright. Privacy questions are directed to personal Gmail addresses. Two policies coexist without overlapping: the site policy dated 20 July 2025 covers only Glu, while FluidVoice documents itself separately in a policy dated 5 July 2026. The mitigating factor is architectural rather than legal, since on-device processing means most personal data is never transmitted.
Who owns the data?
Your content stays yours, largely because almost none of it reaches the vendor. FluidVoice states that raw microphone audio, transcripts, selected text, rewrite prompts, AI responses, terminal output, window titles, file paths, clipboard contents and typed text are never sent to servers it operates, and that no account is required. Preferences, the optional transcription history and downloaded model files sit on your Mac, while provider API keys live in the macOS Keychain. Because the vendor holds nothing, it explicitly redirects access and deletion requests back to the app itself. Glu stores only what you deliberately save to its memory.
Reuse rights
Nothing in the published policies restricts what you do with your own dictated or generated text: it is produced locally, stays on your machine, and Altic claims no licence over it. The vendor states it does not use transcripts, audio, selected text, prompts or AI responses to train AI models, does not sell personal information, and does not track users across other apps or websites. The only outbound flows are optional or incidental: anonymous analytics you can switch off in Settings, model weight downloads, update checks, and any third-party AI provider such as OpenAI or Groq that you choose to enable, which then processes that text under its own policy. Glu is the exception, sending some input transiently to third-party language models to generate suggestions.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
No hosting country or region is stated anywhere on the site, and the core products barely need one, since they are designed around the device rather than a server. User data lives on the Mac: preferences, the optional transcription history, the separate audio history that is off by default, local model files in Application Support, and provider API keys in the macOS Keychain. The vendor states it does not store transcripts or audio on its own servers. The documented outbound flows are optional or incidental: anonymous analytics you can disable, model weight downloads from a hosting service such as Hugging Face, update checks, and any third-party AI provider you choose to enable, which then applies its own jurisdiction and policies. Glu is the exception, routing some input transiently to third-party language models. The marketing site itself resolves to a United States address behind a Vercel front, but that concerns the website rather than user content. No jurisdiction, data residency option or transfer mechanism is documented.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Altic.
- No legal entity is named anywhere, so there is no identifiable party to hold accountable or contract with
- Privacy contacts are personal Gmail addresses rather than company channels, which is fragile if the project stalls
- The site-level privacy policy documents Glu rather than the flagship app, so readers may assess the wrong product
- Enabling an optional cloud provider quietly moves your dictated text off the device and under that provider's rules
- Altic MCP asks for screen recording, Finder automation and accessibility permissions, a very wide surface if a prompt misfires
- Letting an agent send messages, move files or empty the Trash on your behalf can trigger irreversible actions
- Dictating faster than you think can erode the editing discipline that writing by hand normally imposes
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
It depends entirely on the product. FluidVoice is easy: one Homebrew command or a direct download, then two system permissions to grant. FluidWrite and Glu require nothing at all, both being waitlist-only. Altic MCP is a developer task, involving UV, a repository clone, uv sync, an edit to claude_desktop_config.json and seven families of macOS permissions. Pilot is comparable and additionally needs three API keys. No account, no payment and no server configuration is involved anywhere.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Altic
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Altic.
Frequently asked questions
Is Altic software really free?
Which macOS version does FluidVoice require?
Does my voice leave my Mac?
What is Fluid-1?
How many languages are supported?
What can Altic MCP actually do?
Is my data used to train AI models?
Are FluidWrite and Glu available yet?
Does Altic publish terms of service or a DPA?
How is FluidVoice licensed?
Should you pick Altic?
Altic is an unusual proposition: a set of everyday AI utilities that are genuinely free, genuinely open source, and built so the sensitive material never leaves the machine. That last point deserves separating from marketing. FluidVoice does not promise good stewardship of your recordings, it states that it never receives them, requires no account, and sends deletion requests back to your own Mac. For anyone who dictates confidential material, that architecture is a stronger guarantee than policy wording.
The counterweight is governance. There is no terms of service, no legal notice, no named company, no postal address and no mention of the GDPR anywhere on the site. Privacy questions go to personal Gmail addresses, and the policy the navigation points to covers Glu rather than the flagship app. None of this affects how well the software works, but it does mean an organisation cannot establish who it would be contracting with.
Maturity is uneven too. FluidVoice looks like a real product with real adoption, claiming more than 100,000 downloads alongside a Homebrew formula and public testimonials in several languages. Altic MCP and Pilot are substantial open source projects, though both assume a developer at ease with git, UV or pnpm and API keys. FluidWrite and Glu are still announcements with waitlists.
The natural audience is clear: Mac users, often technical, who want dictation and desktop automation without a subscription and without sending their words to a server. Everyone else should read the constraint first, since macOS is the only supported platform and Windows, iOS and Linux remain on a waiting list. The domain was registered in May 2025 and first archived in July 2025, so this is a young project moving fast.
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