What it does
Octop is an AI assistant you run on your own machine, from Tencent Cloud. Each person gets a set of "experts", AI helpers with their own personality and skills, that they can switch between depending on the job.
You can chat with it through a web dashboard, desktop apps, or messaging apps such as WeChat, Telegram, Discord and Feishu. It can search your own documents, browse the web, run scheduled jobs, help in a terminal and hand coding tasks to tools like Claude Code.
Its makers say conversations, files and passwords stay on your own machine. It supports several users with separate accounts, such as members of a family.
Who it's for
Tech-comfortable households and small teams who want a private, shared AI assistant.
Can I use it without coding?
With some setup. It runs as a self-hosted service; desktop apps exist, but setup is still technical. New to this? Start here.
Can I run it?
- Runs on
- Mac, Windows, Linux, Server
- API key
- Not needed
Try it
- Download Octop from the project's releases page or set it up on a home computer or server.
- Run its first-time setup wizard to create the admin account, then open the web dashboard to start chatting.
Using Claude Code, Cursor or another AI coding assistant? Paste the prompt and it will walk you through the setup.New to this?
Before you install
- Only download from the official GitHub page or the official download page above. Copies with similar names exist for many popular projects.
- License (MIT): Very permissive: free to use, change and share, including for business.
- More on staying safe