Turbolarp

NitroAI

Turn any lecture, PDF, or video into study notes, flashcards, quizzes, and a study chat — free, and private by default.

How it works

NitroAI is a small desktop shell around a local web app. When you open it, the app starts a tiny local server on your machine, shows it in a window, keeps it alive, and shuts it down when you quit. That local server is what does the things a plain web page can't — extracting YouTube transcripts with yt-dlp and managing the local AI runtime — so you never install those tools by hand.

Three ways to run the AI

You pick one on first launch (and can switch any time in Settings):

• publik API (default in the packaged builds) — NitroAI sets itself up on first launch, after you accept a short disclosure. Every request is priced per use at 50% of the model's published list price; audio transcription, podcast voices and embeddings are passed through at cost. Most people spend under $2 a month. A new computer starts at $0.00 and no card is asked for: linking it to your publik account gives $0.05 of free use, once per account, and a plan, a pack or your own key takes it from there. Right after setup the app shows your balance and why it costs money, with a button to link the computer and pick a plan (you can also do that later from Settings). Until you link, add a plan or pack, or paste your own key, every publik API request answers 402 and the app shows the link button instead. Your prompts go through publik's servers to a shared model account; publik does not keep them after the reply and never trains on them. The install's key lives in ~/Library/Application Support/publik/apps/nitroai.json (mac) / %LOCALAPPDATA%\publik\apps\nitroai.json (Windows), readable only by you, and never leaves the app's local server. Builds without a publik app token (forks, npm run app without PUBLIK_APP_TOKEN) simply don't offer this option.
• Fully local — when you choose this, NitroAI automatically downloads and starts a local AI runtime (Ollama) and pulls a small, capable model (~2 GB, one time). Everything then runs on your device: no key, no cloud, no cost. Provisioning only ever happens if you pick local — cloud users never download a model.
• Use my own key — paste an OpenAI (sk-…), Anthropic (sk-ant-…) or publik (pk_…) key for the highest-quality notes, quizzes, chat, and podcast voices. The key is stored only on this computer and used only to call your provider directly. A key you enter yourself is never overwritten by the publik setup.

Your notes and generated content live only on your machine (in the app's local database); you can export everything from Settings at any time.

Usage counts

The packaged app sends two usage events to publik: app_opened at each launch and active_session every 30 minutes while it runs. This happens in every mode, fully local included. Each event holds the app name, the app version, the operating system, the CPU type and a random install ID, so a computer without publik API is counted anonymously. On a computer that is set up for publik API, the event also carries that install's publik key: publik then links the count to the install and, if you linked one, to your publik account. It never holds your notes, prompts, file names or your own provider keys. To turn it off, set DO_NOT_TRACK=1 (or PUBLIK_TELEMETRY=0) in the environment before you start NitroAI. Details: https://publikhq.com/skills/telemetry.md.

For developers

Requires Node ≥ 20.19 (Node 21.x is not supported — use 20.19+ or 22 LTS).

git clone https://github.com/Blueturboguy07/NitroAI.git
cd NitroAI
npm install

npm run dev      # Vite dev server (hot reload) — includes the YouTube helper
npm run serve    # build once, then serve the app + helpers at http://localhost:4180
npm run app      # build, then launch the full desktop shell (Electron)

Build installers locally:

npm run dist:mac    # → release/NitroAI-mac-<arch>.dmg
npm run dist:win    # → release/NitroAI-Setup-Windows.exe
npm run dist:linux  # → release/NitroAI-Linux-x86_64.AppImage

Or let CI do it: push a tag (git tag v0.1.0 && git push --tags) and the release workflow builds macOS, Windows, and Linux installers and attaches them to a GitHub Release.

Other scripts: npm test (Vitest), npm run typecheck.

Project layout

src/            React app (UI + all generation/engine/ingest logic, TypeScript)
  lib/engine/   provider abstraction: publik API, OpenAI, Anthropic, and local Ollama
  lib/ingest/   text / url / youtube / pdf / docx / audio → normalized text
  lib/generation/  notes, flashcards, quiz, podcast, chat
server/         the local server the desktop shell runs
  httpServer.mjs  serves the built app + /api/youtube-extract + /api/local/* + /api/publik/*
  publik.mjs      publik API credential (mint after consent, stored 0600, key never in the renderer)
  publikProxy.mjs streaming proxy to publik API — the renderer's only door to it
  ytdlp.mjs       yt-dlp download + caption/audio extraction
  ollama.mjs      Ollama install / serve / model-pull lifecycle
electron/       the desktop shell (starts the server, opens the window)
  publik-telemetry.cjs  publik usage counts client (see Usage counts)

Signing your own builds

By default the release workflow produces ad-hoc-signed builds — valid, but not notarized, so users get a one-time OS warning. If you have signing certificates, add them as GitHub repo secrets (Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions) and every tagged build is automatically signed and notarized — installers then open with no warning at all. No code changes needed; the build detects the secrets.

macOS (needs a paid Apple Developer account and a Developer ID Application certificate):

Secret	What it is
CSC_LINK	Your Developer ID Application cert, exported from Keychain as a .p12, then base64-encoded: base64 -i cert.p12 | pbcopy
CSC_KEY_PASSWORD	The password you set when exporting the .p12
APPLE_ID	Your Apple ID email
APPLE_APP_SPECIFIC_PASSWORD	An app-specific password for that Apple ID (not your login password)
APPLE_TEAM_ID	Your 10-character Team ID (Apple Developer → Membership)

Windows (optional — needs an Authenticode code-signing certificate):

Secret	What it is
WIN_CSC_LINK	Your code-signing cert as a base64-encoded .pfx
WIN_CSC_KEY_PASSWORD	The .pfx password

publik API (optional — makes publik the default engine in your build):

Secret	What it is
PUBLIK_APP_TOKEN	The pat_… app token publik issues for this app. Baked into the build (extraMetadata.publik.appToken); without it the build offers only Local and your own key. It identifies the build, not the user, and publik rate-limits what it can mint.

Then cut a release: git tag v0.1.3 && git push --tags. That's it — nothing else to configure.

Tech

React 19 · Vite · Tailwind · Electron shell · publik API (default) · Ollama (local) · OpenAI / Anthropic (your own key) · KaTeX · FSRS spaced repetition. No backend of its own, no account required. The only telemetry is the usage count: no content, and you can turn it off.

License

AGPL-3.0-or-later. Fork it, ship it, improve it — just keep it open.