Bring your own AI to your notes: your agent, your account, your model

What does “bring your own AI” mean in Koru?

It means Koru doesn’t sit between you and your AI. There’s no Koru AI subscription, no credits, and no key for us to hold. You use the agent and model provider you already pay for, signed in the way that agent normally signs in, and Koru gives it a good place to work: your notes, on your computer.

Today that works two ways:

• Your agent in a tab. On a Mac, press + in the tab strip and choose Agents: Claude, OpenCode, Codex, Grok or Kimi open as tabs beside your documents, if they’re installed. Agent tabs come to Windows in an upcoming release; until then, start any agent in a shell tab. Each one runs on your own account.
• Your MCP client, connected locally. Koru includes a local MCP server that an AI app starts on your computer when it needs it. Through it, an agent can search, read, create and edit your documents and save or restore versions.

• Notes for developers →

Is this BYOK?

In spirit, yes, and with fewer moving parts. In most “BYOK” apps you paste an API key into the app, and the app calls the model for you. In Koru today the app never sees a key: your agent holds its own sign-in, and Koru only exposes your notes to it on your computer.

In-app BYOK, where you paste a key into Koru’s own AI panel, is something we’re working on (see “Coming soon” below).

Can I use a local model with Ollama?

Yes, through an agent that supports it. OpenCode can run on a local model served by Ollama and connect to Koru’s MCP server, so your notes and the model both stay on your computer. The repository has a guide for it.

• The Ollama guide on GitHub →

What leaves my computer?

Be clear-eyed about this, because “local notes” doesn’t make the AI local.

• Your notes stay on your computer. Koru stores them locally, and its MCP server runs locally.
• A cloud agent (Claude Code, Codex and the like) sends your prompts, and anything it reads from your notes, to its model provider. Anthropic’s documentation says Claude Code sends “all user prompts and model outputs” over the network.
• A local model (for example through Ollama) keeps the conversation on your computer too.

Koru doesn’t add a server in the middle. What an agent reads is up to what you ask it to do, and Koru does not ask per agent, so connect only tools you trust.

• Claude Code data usage →
• Private notes →

Coming soon: your own key inside Koru

Koru AI, a chat built into Koru, is in development and hidden in today’s builds. It is being built to run on a model hosted by Koru, on your own OpenAI API key, or on a local Ollama model, and to use a coding agent you have installed as the chat’s model. An OpenAI key is kept in your operating system’s credential vault, and requests go from your computer straight to OpenAI. We’ll say more when it ships.

• See the roadmap →

How does Koru compare?

If you want AI writing tools built into a Markdown editor with your own key today, HelixNotes is a good choice. If your team lives in Taskade or Notion, their built-in AI is the simpler path. Koru is for people who already use a coding agent and want it working on notes that stay on their own computer.