# AQBot — Local-first AI desktop client

> AQBot is a local-first desktop AI workspace that brings multi-provider chat, ACP agents, knowledge bases, MCP tools and an API gateway together while keeping app data and user files under your control.

AQBot is a free, open-source AI desktop client. Chat with any provider, hand tasks to agents, ground answers in your own documents, and share your models with coding tools through a local API gateway.

Source: https://app.aqbot.top/

## What you can do with AQBot

- **Chat with any model**: Connect OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Qwen or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Compare answers from several models side by side, branch conversations and keep message versions.
- **Hand work to agents**: Switch a chat into Agent mode to read, edit and run code in a folder with per-action approval, or open the ACP workbench to drive Codex, Claude Agent, Gemini CLI and other ACP agents.
- **Extend with MCP and Skills**: Run MCP servers over stdio, SSE or StreamableHTTP, use built-in tools such as @aqbot/fetch, and manage Skills folders for AQBot, Codex, Claude and Agents in one place.
- **Answer from your documents**: Index private files into a local sqlite-vec knowledge base, add web search from Tavily, Exa, Zhipu or Bocha, and attach memories and files to the context.
- **Serve your models locally**: Expose configured providers as OpenAI, Claude and Gemini compatible endpoints, with gateway keys, TLS, request logs and usage stats for tools like Claude Code and Codex CLI.
- **Keep data on your machine**: App state lives in ~/.aqbot and your files in ~/Documents/aqbot. API keys are encrypted with AES-256, and backups go to a local folder, WebDAV or S3-compatible storage.

## Questions people ask

### What is AQBot?

AQBot is a free, open-source desktop AI client for macOS, Windows and Linux. It combines multi-provider chat, agents, MCP tools, local knowledge bases and a local API gateway in one application, and keeps app data and user files on your computer.

### Is AQBot free?

Yes. AQBot is free to download and use, and its source code is published on GitHub under the AGPL-3.0 license. You pay only the model providers you choose to connect, or nothing if you run local models.

### Which AI providers and models can I use?

AQBot connects to OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Qwen and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, including local servers such as Ollama. You can set a custom Base URL, API path, headers and proxy per provider, and import providers from aqbot:// links or CC Switch.

### Which operating systems are supported?

macOS on Apple Silicon and Intel, Windows 10 and 11 on x64 and ARM64, and Linux on x64 and ARM64 through AppImage, deb and rpm packages.

### Where does AQBot store my data?

Application state such as the database, encryption key and vector store lives in ~/.aqbot. Your images, attachments and backups live in ~/Documents/aqbot. API keys are encrypted with AES-256 using a local master key.

### How do I use AQBot with Claude Code, Codex CLI or Gemini CLI?

Start the API gateway in AQBot and generate a gateway key. Quick Connect then writes the address and key into Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Gemini CLI or Cursor for you; manually, Claude Code needs ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=http://localhost:8080/v1 and ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN set to the gateway key.

## Download

v0.0.165: https://github.com/AQBot-Desktop/AQBot/releases/tag/v0.0.165