A personal wiki
you can talk to.

Bring your notes, sources and ideas into one place. Connect them through your writing. Talk them through while Orion researches alongside you.

Download for MacApple Silicon. macOS 13.3 or later.

Explore an example

Scenes, scraps of dialogue, and the question holding a film together.

Example Space

The scene before the storm

A scene that needs less explaining.

She says she is waiting for the bus. Three buses have passed. He leaves a space beside him, but she stays standing.

Try withholding information a little longer. Let the audience notice the folded letter before anyone mentions it. Small gestures might carry what the dialogue currently explains.

The storm could begin as offscreen sound: rain against the shelter while the road still looks dry. Keep the scene ordinary enough that her leaving matters.

Original source: Bus shelter rehearsal.txt

In conversationReady to explore

You

How do I make this scene tense without adding more dialogue?

Orion

I’ll look at the rehearsal, the gestures and the sound. What does she want to avoid saying?

Follow a linked phrase. See where it takes you.Keep talking while the smaller orbs research.

Keep talking while
the other orbs research.

Ask Orion to investigate a few threads. Separate orbs work on them while you continue the main voice conversation—asking another question, developing an idea or changing direction.

Findings return to the same conversation. Open a finished orb to explore its reasoning and evidence, then keep what matters as a note in your Space.

From a pile of sources
to a connected library.

Bring in documents, webpages, images and recordings. Keep the original text, then use optional AI to develop the material into editable notes and connected ideas.

What you bring

PDF

Opening notes.pdf

PDF document

JPG

Corner study.jpg

Photograph

M4A

A conversation with a neighbour.m4a

Voice recording

Extract the text

Local OCR + Whisper

What you can work with

A first menu

A short menu we can make consistently.

Neighbourhood rhythms

School runs, early shifts and slow afternoons.

Editable note

Repeat visits

The café needs to fit into an ordinary week. Neighbourhood rhythms should shape a first menu, with a few things worth coming back for.

From Opening notes.pdf

The original stays. Extracted source text is preserved alongside your notes.

Sources

Your knowledge
keeps developing.

Orion starts with a body of work: what you write, read, import and return to. Conversations become part of that work. A useful answer can become an editable note, a lasting link or the start of your next draft.

Write in the actual document.

Start before you have a title. Shape a draft with rich text, tables, images and checklists. Review AI edits where the words belong, then accept or discard them.

Connect ideas through the words.

A phrase leads to its own article. The same idea can appear across many notes, all pointing to the same place. Your library becomes a wiki you can keep improving.

Talk with your project’s context.

Each Space keeps its notes, sources and conversation together. Research starts from the material you have already collected, and useful findings stay there for the next time.

Why choose Orion over
Obsidian or Notion?

For a library you can think with: ideas that grow into their own wiki articles, connections that appear in your writing, and a conversation that keeps going while research happens alongside it.

Coming from Obsidian

Obsidian gives you local Markdown files and powerful ways to link them. Choose Orion when you want help developing the ideas inside those notes into a wiki, with reusable connections built into the writing.

Give an idea one article. Return to it from every note.

Teach Orion a phrase and give it a home in an editable article. Later mentions in the same Space can link there automatically. Click the words to follow the idea, add to its article, then carry on writing. Create that article yourself, or use optional AI to develop it from your notes and sources.

Write about “public space” in a field note, an interview and a draft. All three can lead to the same article, so you keep building on what you already know.

Coming from Notion

Notion brings shared documents, databases and AI together. Choose Orion for a personal wiki you can discuss in voice, with your project’s notes and source material already in context.

Ask for research. Keep the conversation going.

Send a few questions off to separate research orbs, then keep talking with Orion. Develop the next thought, challenge an assumption or change direction while those threads work in parallel. You don’t have to wait for every answer before saying what comes next.

Findings return to the conversation. Open a finished orb to explore its evidence, then keep a useful answer as an editable note in the same Space. The research becomes part of the wiki you return to next time.

See the linked notes and voice orbs in action

One place for
the whole body of work.

Writing tools, source material, research and the things you make from them. Everything below is part of the same workspace.

Write & focus

Rich text, focused windows and dictation.

Start before you have a title

Open a note and begin with the thought itself; the title and subtitle are optional. A quiet word count appears while you edit, and highlighting a passage shows how many words you have selected.

A proper writing surface

Shape a document with headings, lists, checkboxes, tables, quotes, code, images and source citations. Familiar formatting controls keep you in the page, while portable Markdown remains underneath.

Dictation that keeps your meaning

Speak naturally at the cursor. On-device transcription turns your speech into text, ready to insert into the note when you stop.

Included in Orion 0.6.0 · AI cleanup optional

Optional AI cleanup takes out filler and accidental repetition, adds punctuation and paragraph breaks, recognises lists and to-dos, and handles clear spoken corrections before the text enters your note.

You say: “Let’s meet on Friday—oh no, actually Thursday.”
In your note: “Let’s meet on Thursday.”

Designed to preserve your voice and genuine uncertainty. Your original transcript stays recoverable. Without an AI key, dictation uses only local Whisper transcription; it also falls back to the original if cleanup is unavailable.

A little time to write

Set a writing timer and pause, resume or finish whenever you need. Optional Flow protects your existing writing while giving a new passage an inactivity deadline: keep typing or choose Stop and keep, because an unfinished passage disappears when that deadline expires.

Collect & connect

Imports, source passages and lasting links.

Bring your material together

Import PDFs, Word documents, Markdown, text, webpages, images, audio, video and YouTube. Keep each source as an editable note, or use optional AI organization to develop the ideas into connected notes and articles.

Read images. Transcribe recordings.

Apple Vision extracts text from images and scanned PDF pages, while bundled Whisper turns recorded speech into text. Both run on your Mac without a transcription subscription, a separate model server or a provider key.

Build a wiki through the words

Teach Orion a phrase and give it a home in a canonical article; future occurrences can link there automatically. Create the destination yourself or ask AI to develop it, then follow the connections directly from the prose.

Find the passage, keep the source

Search across notes and preserved source text, filter the results and jump to a highlighted passage. Citations lead back to the material behind an idea, so a useful summary need not become a dead end.

Think with AI

Voice orbs, project Chat and reviewed edits.

Talk to your Space

Explore a project in text or voice, ask about a selected passage and keep writing while research continues. Detailed findings and citations stay in the conversation, and a useful reply can become a note.

Review the words that change

Ask Orion to clarify, tighten, expand or rewrite a passage, or help continue a draft. Proposed edits appear in the note for Accept or Discard, with Undo after acceptance.

Discuss a passage in place

Leave your own annotation without AI, or ask a follow-up question beside the words that prompted it. The discussion stays attached to the passage and can continue in Chat when you want more room.

Research you can follow back

Ask questions of the current Space and inspect the exact passages used in the answer, including any limits to what was read. Add an optional Perplexity connection for web research, with source links and excerpts retained alongside the findings.

Make & share

Images, narration, presentations and exports.

Illustrate the idea

Generate an image from a selected passage, with the choice to use relevant material from its Space. Review the image before accepting it into the note, then place it alongside your writing.

Give a project another form

Generate a new note, a podcast script, a slide deck or a deck written to be narrated. Choose whether to draw on notes from the current Space, and keep the result as editable work.

Listen, revise, listen again

Hear a note read aloud with system speech or your configured OpenAI or ElevenLabs voice. Follow a narrated slide deck or download narration to listen beyond Orion.

Take your work with you

Export one note, its nearby linked notes or an entire Space as Markdown, an editable Word document or a self-contained HTML article. The HTML opens offline, and exports leave unrelated Spaces, Chat history and provider settings behind.

Your personal workspace

Spaces, tasks, windows and appearance.

A Space for each project

Keep each project’s notes, original sources, concepts and conversation together, with clear boundaries between Spaces. A living overview helps you return to the work without reconstructing the whole story.

Tasks stay in the writing

Make a to-do where the thought occurs, using an ordinary checklist in a note. Home gathers open tasks with links back to their context, and you can check them off without entering edit mode.

More room when you need it

Open several library windows or give a draft its own focused writing window without the sidebar. They share the same library while keeping navigation independent, and competing edits to the same text offer a choice.

Keep a useful excerpt nearby

Bring a passage from another note into your document with a reference back to its source. The excerpt is a saved snapshot, so later changes to the original do not silently rewrite your document.

Make the room feel like yours

Choose serif or sans-serif writing, light or dark appearance, native glass and a curated or personal palette. Optional Home atmospheres bring colour and movement, with reduced-motion and accessibility preferences respected.

Local, with room for your assistants

Local files, your providers, Codex and Claude.

Your library lives on your Mac

Writing, manual imports, OCR, Whisper transcription, search, links, tasks and export remain useful without an AI key. Notes and sources stay in a local library, with no Orion sync service required.

Choose your AI connections

Use your own OpenAI or Anthropic connection for optional writing and research; voice conversation and image rendering use OpenAI. Provider features send the relevant text or context to those services and use your provider account, while credentials stay in the operating system’s credential store.

Bring Codex and Claude inside

The bundled Codex plugin and Claude Desktop extension let connected assistants search Spaces, read sources and work with ordinary notes. Enable additional Orion workflows when you want those assistants to use its research and generation capabilities.

Understand where your work goes

Optional AI and web research use external services; everyday local work does not depend on them. The local vault and exported documents are not encrypted by Orion, and text you share with an external assistant follows that service’s account settings.

Local at its core.
Open by choice.

Your library lives on your Mac. Use Orion for writing, imports, search, OCR, local transcription and export before connecting an AI provider.

Your own providers

Connect OpenAI or Anthropic for optional AI. Use the services you choose, with credentials stored in your Mac’s Keychain.

Your other assistants

Let Codex and Claude work with your Spaces through Orion’s bundled plugin and desktop connector.

Your work, portable

Take a note or a whole Space with you as Markdown, Word or an offline HTML document.

A few practical details.

Do I need an AI subscription?

Writing, local imports, search, links, tasks, OCR, Whisper transcription and export work without an AI key. Optional AI uses your own provider API keys. Text Chat and writing support OpenAI or Anthropic; voice conversations and image generation require OpenAI. API usage is billed separately from ChatGPT or Claude subscriptions.

Where does my information go?

Your library lives on your Mac. OCR and Whisper run on-device. Optional AI, voice, web research and connected assistants send relevant material to those services. Provider keys live in the macOS Keychain. Orion does not encrypt the local vault or currently provide cloud or mobile sync.

Can I take my work elsewhere?

Export an individual note, linked notes or an entire Space as Markdown, an editable Word document or self-contained HTML that opens offline. The original source text stays in your library alongside the notes you develop from it.

Can I dictate instead of typing?

Yes. Speak at the cursor, then stop when you’re finished. Whisper transcribes on your Mac. With a configured AI key, Orion can clean up filler and accidental repetition, add punctuation, recognise lists and to-dos, and follow clear spoken corrections before inserting the text. Your original transcript stays recoverable. Without a key, it uses only local Whisper transcription; local dictation also keeps working if cleanup is unavailable.

What does the download include?

Orion 0.6.0 for Apple Silicon Macs on macOS 13.3 or later. The 1.51 GB installer includes Whisper Medium for local dictation and transcription. AI transcript cleanup is optional and uses your own provider key. Open the DMG and drag Orion into Applications.

Do I need a new installer for every update?

Install this version once. Orion checks GitHub Releases for updates and shows a small Update button when one is available. Choose to download it, keep writing while it arrives, then restart when you’re ready. Orion saves your open notes and verifies the update’s signature before installing. You can also check manually in Settings → Updates.

Build something
you can think with.

Orion for Mac.

Orion 0.6.0

Download Orion

Platform: Apple Silicon
Requires: macOS 13.3 or later
Includes: Whisper Medium
Installer: 1.51 GB

Developer ID signed and Apple-notarized.

Release notes Verify download

A personal wikiyou can talk to.