Theo Desk (macOS)

Theo Desk is a native macOS desktop app that gives Theo eyes, hands, and a keyboard on your Mac. It can see your screen, drive any application, and run multi-step workflows—all with the safety gates and audit log you already know from the web.

Download

Theo Desk ships as a signed, notarized macOS app on the Theo Desk Releases repo. We publish a single universal-binary DMG that runs natively on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs (macOS 13 Ventura or newer).

Download the latest DMG

First time on macOS, you may need to right-click the .app and choose Open so Gatekeeper accepts the publisher signature.

Permissions

On first launch, Theo Desk walks you through a three-step setup wizard. macOS requires you to grant each permission explicitly in System Settings → Privacy & Security. Theo Desk only acts on apps you have allowed.

Accessibility

Lets Theo read UI elements (the AX tree) and synthesize mouse + keyboard events for any app.

Screen Recording

Allows Theo to capture screenshots when the AX tree is not enough — e.g. visual-heavy apps.

Input Monitoring

Required for the workflow recorder so Theo can learn a recipe by watching you click and type.

Theo Desk ships with a hard app + URL blocklistfor banking, crypto, healthcare, and password managers. You can add to this list any time from Desk Settings → Permissions.

What Theo can do on your Mac

AX Tree

Read every interactive element in any app

Mouse

Click, drag, scroll at coordinates or AX refs

Keyboard

Type text, press combos, fire menu shortcuts

App Control

Open / focus / quit any macOS app

Browser

Drive Chrome via the Theo Desk Browser extension

Connectors

Skip the UI — call EVI connectors when one exists

Press ⌘D from anywhere in the app to open the Desk Mode panel, then ask Theo to do something on your Mac.

Theo Desk Browser extension

Web automation bridge

For browser tasks, Theo Desk pairs with a tiny Chrome extension that connects to the app over a local-only WebSocket on port 9222. Once installed, Theo can navigate, read pages, click selectors, and fill forms inside Chrome.

Open chrome://extensions and enable Developer mode.
Click Load unpacked and select the extensions/theo-desk-browser/ directory from the OpenCharts repo, or download the latest packaged zip from Theo Desk Releases.
The extension auto-connects when Theo Desk is running. The Browser tab inside Desk Settings shows a live status indicator.

Theo Desk auto-starts the local WebSocket bridge on launch, so you only need to install the extension once—there is no "Start server" step.

Auto-update

Always on the latest version

On every launch, Theo Desk checks the Theo Desk Releases feed and prompts you to install when an update is available. Updates are signature-verified against an embedded public key, so only releases produced by our build pipeline can be installed.

You can also trigger a check manually any time from the menu bar → Check for Updates… item.

Code Canvas on the desktop

A Cursor-grade native coding workspace

Every Code Canvas project opens in its own native window with a real working directory on disk, a multi-tab terminal backed by portable-pty, a file tree explorer, an in-preview console, multi-tab editor, and a chat sidebar that can drive AI iterations or run shell commands.

Local working directory

Each canvas mirrors to ~/Library/Application Support/theodesk/canvases/<projectId>. AI iterations, terminal commands, and external editors all see the same files. A debounced watcher keeps the UI in sync.

Native terminal (Warp-style)

Multi-tab xterm.js rendering bound to a real PTY. Default cwd is your project workdir; it inherits your $SHELL on macOS. Use the dedicated /run <cmd> chat command to dispatch a one-shot.

Try to fix runtime errors

Console errors and SQL failures from the live preview are captured into a deduped buffer. A banner offers a one-click Try to fix that hands the errors to Theo for a focused patch.

CSS fast-path + auto snapshots

Trivial color/size/radius changes are applied instantly without an AI round-trip. Auto-saves throttle a version snapshot every 5 minutes so you can always restore.

Toggle the file tree, terminal, and chat sidebar from the icons in the canvas window header. Layout preferences are remembered per project.

Safety

You stay in control

Per-app permissions: every new app Theo touches asks for one-time approval the first time it is used.
App + URL blocklist: banking, crypto, healthcare, government, and password-manager apps and domains are blocked out of the box.
Kill switch: a single click in the Desk Mode panel halts every in-flight tool call immediately.
Audit log: every tool call is recorded with parameters, result, and risk level, viewable from the Audit tab.

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