Olwen

A calm AI companion that quietly knows everything.

_{Reads your mail · Writes your morning · Runs your terminal · Stays out of your way}

"Most assistants shout. Olwen listens."

Olwen is an ambient AI presence that lives at the edge of your screen. He reads your inbox, watches your calendar, holds your tasks, runs your terminal — and waits, patient, until you ask.

He's not a chat window. He's a creature.

✦ What he does

Listens, all day, quietly Connect Gmail, Google Calendar, GitHub, and Strava. Olwen reads your day without rules to write — what you skipped, who's waiting for a reply, what you ran in the terminal yesterday.	Speaks once, with a voice A morning brief in his voice, 30 seconds: weather, the email that matters, the task to start with, one news headline. Six sentences, then quiet.
Acts when you ask "Open my project with claude." He picks the right repo, opens Finder, drops you into a terminal with Claude Code in dangerous mode. Eight words → three actions → zero clicks.	Stays out of the way No notification storms. No daily nudges. No "Olwen wants to talk to you." He breathes in the corner of the screen and waits.

✦ Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                                                             │
│    olwen/                                                   │
│    ├── backend/   FastAPI + async SQLAlchemy + PostgreSQL   │
│    │              Olwen's brain: integrations, AI, voice    │
│    │                                                        │
│    ├── frontend/  Nuxt 4 + Vue 3 + TypeScript               │
│    │              Olwen's body: dashboard, dev mode, apps   │
│    │                                                        │
│    └── site/      Vite + Vue + custom SVG                   │
│                   The marketing site (olwenai.com)          │
│                                                             │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Backend is a modular monolith. Real subprocess control (PTY over WebSocket so terminals stream live), real OAuth (Gmail/Calendar via Google, GitHub PAT + OAuth, Strava OAuth), real LLM tool-calling (Gemini function-calling with UI-action dispatch back to the frontend), real server-side TTS (Edge neural voices streamed as MP3).

Frontend is Nuxt 4 with SSR off — runs as a single-page app. The Olwen creature is hand-drawn SVG with tendrils that morph in real-time toward your cursor. Dashboard widgets are individually toggleable. Apps (terminal, browser, editor) live in floating draggable windows.

Marketing site is intentionally separate, intentionally tiny — build output is 8 KB CSS + 36 KB JS gzipped.

✦ Senses

📨	Inbox	Triages your unread, ranks by urgency, suggests action per email. Olwen reads important ones aloud.
🗓	Calendar	Google Calendar primary, today + tomorrow. Marks events soon within 90 min.
✓	Tasks	Hand-written tasks with priority + list scoping. Cinematic review animation when you ask.
▢	Terminal	Real PTY on your host. Run claude, git, anything. Olwen can run commands himself.
⌗	Code	GitHub activity feed + local repo picker. "Open my project with claude" works.
✦	News	RSS topics you follow → 5 picks with one-line "why this matters" each.
♥	Body	Strava activities, training load. Olwen knows when you had a hard day.
⌖	Voice	Server-side TTS via Edge neural voices. Plays through a normal <audio> tag — works anywhere.

✦ The morning brief

Every morning, Olwen pulls his senses together and writes you the day in 4–6 sentences. Then he reads it aloud:

"Good morning, Moaz. It's already 35 degrees in Riyadh — high of 44. Your evening holds Quran Werd at seven. The Q3 deck for Sarah needs your review, and a Google security alert is waiting. In the news, Anthropic raised $65B ahead of an IPO. Perhaps begin with Sarah's deck."

  — Olwen · 07:58 AM · 31 seconds of neural audio

It fires once. No second one. No "evening summary." No "weekly digest."

✦ Dev mode

A pitch-black focus environment for coders. Say "enter dev mode" — or hit the keyboard shortcut — and the dashboard fades. Olwen and your projects are all that remains.

Pick a project, and Olwen:

1. Opens the folder in Finder (/usr/bin/open)
2. Spawns a PTY in that directory
3. Auto-runs claude --dangerously-skip-permissions

Eight words, three actions, zero clicks.

✦ Tech stack

Backend

• Python 3.14, FastAPI, async SQLAlchemy 2.0
• PostgreSQL (will get pgvector for memory embeddings)
• Anthropic SDK / Google Gemini REST / Groq for LLMs
• pty.fork() + WebSockets for terminal streaming
• edge-tts for neural voice synthesis
• feedparser + httpx for news aggregation
• aiosmtplib for SMTP sending
• imap-tools for IMAP fallback

Frontend (product)

• Nuxt 4 / Vue 3 / TypeScript
• xterm.js for the terminal app (lazy-loaded)
• Hand-rolled SVG for the Olwen creature
• Web Speech API for browser TTS fallback
• IntersectionObserver-based reveals

Marketing site

• Vite + Vue 3 + TypeScript
• Custom SVG creature (same shape as the product)
• Hand-rolled motion (no GSAP) via rAF + IO

Infrastructure

• nginx + certbot (Let's Encrypt) for HTTPS
• Caddy where appropriate
• Single-host deployment for now (Ubuntu 24.04 in Riyadh)

✦ Install — one command

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/moaaznaabilali/olwen/main/install.sh | bash

That's it. The installer clones the repo, sets up the Python venv, installs backend + frontend dependencies, creates the Postgres database, generates a random JWT secret, and writes a start.sh to launch everything.

When it finishes:

cd olwen
./start.sh

Then open http://localhost:3100 — that's Olwen.

Prerequisites: Python 3.11+, Node 20+, pnpm, PostgreSQL. macOS: brew install python node pnpm postgresql@16 && brew services start postgresql@16 Ubuntu: sudo apt install python3 python3-venv nodejs postgresql && npm i -g pnpm

✦ How to use Olwen

1. Sign up

Open http://localhost:3100, click Create account, enter any email + password. Olwen sends a 6-digit verification code — in dev mode it prints to the backend terminal (no email key needed):

[email/console] OTP for you@example.com → 482193

Paste it back in the UI. You're in.

2. Give Olwen a brain (BYO key)

Settings → AI provider → paste your own:

• Claude key from https://console.anthropic.com (paid, best quality), or
• Gemini key from https://aistudio.google.com/apikey (free tier), or
• Groq key from https://console.groq.com (free, fastest)

You keep the key. It lives encrypted in your local Postgres.

3. Connect your life

From the dashboard, run the setup wizards (no env editing — credentials go straight into the DB):

Connect	What unlocks
Gmail (Google OAuth or IMAP)	Inbox triage, AI summaries, "read & reply with Olwen", morning brief
Google Calendar	Today's events in the dashboard + brief
GitHub (OAuth or PAT)	Repo activity widget, dev mode auto-context
Strava	Health/training widget
News (RSS)	Curated brief + cinematic "read with Olwen" mode

4. Ask him to do something

The chat input at the bottom is Olwen. Try:

• "What's my morning?" → opens the cinematic brief
• "Triage my inbox" → opens email work mode
• "Start a focus session on the olwen repo" → opens dev mode + terminal
• "Remember that I prefer mornings for deep work" → writes to long-term memory

He's not a chat window — when he answers, he opens the right surface for the task (inbox, calendar, terminal, brief) so you can act, not scroll.

5. Dev mode

Click the terminal icon in the dock (or say "open dev mode"). Pick a project, and Olwen drops you into a black focus stage with a real PTY terminal + an LLM that already knows your project context. Quit dev mode with ⌘K or exit.

6. Voice

Hold Space to push-to-talk, or toggle Always listening in Settings. Olwen replies with a neural voice (Edge TTS, no API key needed).

✦ Manual install (if you skip the one-liner)

git clone https://github.com/moaaznaabilali/olwen.git && cd olwen
./install.sh        # same script, run locally
./start.sh

Or fully by hand: see backend/README.md and frontend/README.md.

✦ Status

✅	Account system + Email OTP (Resend)
✅	Multi-provider LLM (Claude / Gemini / Groq, BYO key)
✅	Voice I/O (browser + server TTS)
✅	Tasks + cinematic review mode
✅	Memory store
✅	Skills marketplace + custom MCPs
✅	Gmail/IMAP universal email + triage + AI summarize + send/reply
✅	Google OAuth (calendar + gmail.modify)
✅	GitHub OAuth + PAT path
✅	Strava OAuth
✅	News RSS aggregator + "read with Olwen" cinematic
✅	Morning brief (auto-trigger + manual)
✅	Apps dock + real terminal app (PTY over WS)
✅	Dev mode (project picker + auto-Claude)
✅	Agent UI tools (Olwen opens his own surfaces)
🚧	Browser app + agent web automation
🚧	Editor app (Monaco + workspace files)
🚧	Mobile app
🚧	Multi-user / team deployment

✦ License

This project is licensed under PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0.

In short:

• ✅ You can run Olwen for yourself, your hobby, your study, your charity, your school, your government work.
• ✅ You can modify it, fork it, share your fork.
• ✅ You can use it in research and publish what you learned.
• ❌ You can't sell Olwen, or a service built on Olwen, without a separate commercial license.
• ❌ You can't bundle Olwen into a paid SaaS, paid app, or revenue-generating product.

For commercial-use licensing, write to moaaznaabilali@gmail.com.

The license text is the long version. The vibe is: build with him for yourself; don't make money off him.

✦ Credits

Created by Moaz Nabil in Riyadh.

Olwen is shaped after the calm, ambient creatures of the deep — a small luminous body, seven tendrils, and the discipline of patience.

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_{Olwen quietly knows everything.}

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