Cursiv is two things: this website, where you can try a free live demo — and a downloadable desktop app that runs a private AI entirely on your own computer. Nothing below requires prior knowledge.
A soft chat demo you can try without an account — no signup, no install. Everything else — the community board, sealed family letters, and the rest of what Cursiv does — lives in the free desktop app.
The full desktop app runs an AI model directly on your machine — no subscription, no cloud dependency, nothing you type sent anywhere unless you choose to add your own API key. It works fully offline.
Roughly in order, but skip around — nothing here is sequential-only.
Head to the homepage and talk to the soft demo chat. It's public, rate-limited, and doesn't ask you to sign up first.
Try the demoThe community board, sealed family letters, the 14-agent council, offline operation — the full feature list is on the homepage.
See the featuresThe website is a preview. The desktop app is where the real AI system lives — see "The Desktop App" below before you download, so you know what to expect.
What to expectOnce you're in the desktop app, you can add your own xAI, OpenAI, or Anthropic key for larger cloud models — entirely optional, on top of the offline model that ships by default.
How keys workWhat each page actually does, without the mythology.
The main page. What Cursiv does, a live demo chat, the full feature list, and links to everything else.
A separate, curated vault of letters written by Cursiv's creator for specific people in his life. Most visitors will see it sealed — that's expected.
A chat client that talks to Ollama running on your own computer — only useful if you already have Ollama installed locally. The desktop app is the easier path.
Settings and memory for the local Chat page above. The community board and sealed letters live in the desktop app, not here.
Background on the project and where it's headed. Nothing to do — just read, if you're curious.
Setting real expectations, so nothing on install day is a surprise.
Cursiv works fully offline out of the box, using llama3.1 running on your own machine through Ollama. If you want access to larger cloud models, you can add your own key from xAI, OpenAI, or Anthropic directly inside the desktop app's chat interface — this is a desktop-app feature, not something you configure on this website. The system always tries your local model first; a cloud key only gets used if you specifically ask for it, or if the local model isn't available. No key, no problem — nothing is required to use Cursiv.
Pick any of the above — nothing here has a wrong order.