A cat that lives on your desktop.

DeskCat is a small cat in a cardboard box, with its name on the side, that lives on your desktop. It keeps you company while you work: it plays, jumps out to explore, naps, and wanders over to say hi now and then.

What it does

• Wiggle the pointer near the boxIt rises up, paws on the rim, and bats at you if you get close.
• Hover gently over its headThat's petting. Happy eyes, purring, little hearts.
• Click itIt crouches and jumps out of the box.
• Move slowly along the floorSometimes it stalks, wiggles its bum and pounces. Sometimes it just watches.
• Swipe fast right past itIt startles and hops away, or ducks into the box.
• Drag itYou pick it up by the scruff. Drop it back in the box.
• Throw its toyIt chases it, bats it about, pounces on it, and trots off with it in its mouth.
• Hold the toy up highIt climbs up after it, one paw over the other.
• Spin the pointer in circlesIt gets dizzy. Swirly eyes, little stars.
• Leave it aloneIt grooms, yawns, stretches, loafs, and falls asleep. Eventually it goes home.

Make it yours

You can rename it, pick its coat and eye colour, change the box colour, choose its toy, make it bigger or smaller, and decide how playful it is. It remembers everything.

Small and quiet

• No accounts, no internet, no tracking. It just runs on your Mac.
• Drawn entirely in code, with no images. It slows itself down while it naps, to go easy on your battery.

Installing it

DeskCat needs macOS 13 or later on an Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or newer). Download it, unzip, and drag it into Applications.

Because it isn't signed by a paid Apple developer account, your Mac will block it the first time. Try to open it, click Done, then go to System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway. You only do this once.

Check it, or make it yours

That warning can feel a bit scary, and you shouldn't have to take a stranger's word for it. All of DeskCat's code is open on GitHub, so you can point your own AI coding agent at it and ask whatever you like before you install anything. For example:

• Look through github.com/roan-ux/DeskCat and tell me if it does anything it shouldn't: network access, reading my files, anything sneaky.
• Build DeskCat from source for me, so I'm running exactly the code I can read.

Building it yourself also skips the warning, since your Mac trusts apps built on it.

And because it's your copy, your agent can change anything:

• Make my DeskCat a tabby with green eyes.
• Add a new toy: a ball of yarn it can unravel.
• Make it nap more in the afternoon.