I'm building Arc for people who want an AI assistant that can help them get real work done on their own computer: programmers, graphic designers, AI image creators, writers, server owners and people working on authorized security projects.
Arc is an upcoming Windows desktop application with local AI models, voice conversation, image understanding, web research, browser control, coding tools and a growing plugin library. You can ask a question, work through a problem, create an actual file, inspect an image or give Arc a practical task using text or voice.
The planned price is $25 as a one-time purchase. After that, the included local AI features and local tools are yours to use free forever on your PC, with no monthly Arc subscription or per-token Arc charge for local inference. You supply the compatible hardware, storage and electricity.
Online services are a separate consideration. Web providers can have their own limits, third-party plugins may need accounts or paid APIs, and the current hosted Image Studio is not included as unlimited free generation. I'll make any separate service terms clear before launch.
Arc is in active development and testing. This is a first look at the upcoming product; sales haven't opened yet.
The setup is designed to guide you through the decisions that matter. Choose where to install Arc, where your models and components should live, and where your created files should go. Images have an images folder, code has a code folder, and other files have their own location.
Arc checks your GPU, VRAM, RAM, CPU, drivers and available storage, then shows the supported model choices and their resource estimates. You select the models, voice, vision and tools you want, review the downloads, and watch setup progress. Required runtimes are handled automatically. You don't have to install every model or tool just to get started.
The current local model lineup has four roles:
- Arc Core: general conversation, writing, planning and everyday work, based on a Qwen3.8-27B Heretic variant.
- Arc Scout [Lite]: a Qwen3.6-35B-A3B Heretic model using the smaller IQ3_XXS quantization.
- Arc Reason [Lite]: a Qwen3.6-35B-A3B Heretic option using Q4_K_M quantization.
- Arc Code [Lite]: a Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B Heretic model for coding work, using Q4_K_M quantization.
These are Arc's names for their roles in the application. The underlying models come from their respective developers and community contributors, with their attribution and licensing retained. Your purchase supports the Arc application, its interface, setup and integrated tools. Only one main text model is loaded at a time, so downloading several gives you choices without keeping all their weights in VRAM together.
Thinking-capable models offer Instant and Think deeply controls. Arc Code offers Extended reply. You can choose how much working context to use within the selected model's supported limits, with resource information to help you understand the tradeoff.
For coding, Arc creates real files you can save, copy and open in Explorer. It can read supported saved code, make focused repairs, preserve originals and check the result. The toolkit includes syntax checks for HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, Python and JSON, an Aider-based code map, isolated synchronous JavaScript tests, and an optional CPU reviewer.
That makes workflows such as "create this PHP script," "find the error in this JavaScript file," or "repair this file and check it again" practical. Checks show what was actually verified. A syntax pass is not a guarantee that an entire application is correct, and AI-generated work still deserves review.
Server owners also get SSH project tools. Connect your server, select a project folder, find a file, read the current source, make a targeted change and download the result. Existing files receive verified backups before supported edits. Remote command access has its own control, so connecting a server doesn't automatically turn every command on.
For creators, Arc Sight provides local image understanding. Give Arc a reference image or screenshot and ask it to describe the scene, read visible text, discuss composition, suggest prompt wording or review an interface. This can help turn a visual idea into something you can develop in your preferred image workflow.
The creative toolkit also includes ten local image utilities:
- Inspect dimensions, format and metadata.
- Resize and crop.
- Convert between PNG and JPEG.
- Pad a canvas.
- Extract an approximate dominant color palette.
- Build a contact sheet from up to 16 images.
- Flip and rotate images.
- Strip PNG metadata from a new copy.
These are practical image-processing tools. Resizing changes dimensions; it isn't AI detail-restoring upscaling. Edits create new output files so you can keep the originals.
Arc also has a separate Image Studio for generating images from a scene description. The current implementation uses a hosted Krea2/SickRealism service and saves completed PNGs to your PC. That generation happens on the service's hardware, and its access and allowances will be explained separately before launch. Local vision and local image utilities are part of the included PC toolkit.
Talk to Arc gives you continuous local voice conversation. Speak, pause and let Arc reply aloud. You can interrupt it by speaking, mute the microphone and choose CPU or GPU speech processing, with GPU as the default when available. Captions stay in the voice window, and saving the voice transcript to the main chat is optional.
Speech recognition and speech synthesis run locally. Voice also uses a local language model to compose the answer. Startup time and response speed depend on the selected model, hardware and workload; I'm continuing to test and improve that experience before release.
For research, Arc can search the web, read source pages and provide clickable source cards. Optional Agent Reach tools add supported readers for sources such as RSS feeds, GitHub and YouTube captions. Optional Scrapling adds more advanced webpage extraction, including supported dynamic pages.
Arc includes its own browser with tabs, an address bar, navigation controls and saved website sessions. AI browser automation uses a separately connected Brave session for navigation, page reading, clicking and forms. Browser access is something you deliberately connect. A custom DNS-over-HTTPS setting is available for Arc's own browser.
There are also tools for downloading supported public images, PDFs and direct video files, collecting matching images from a website, and keeping source information with the saved results. A background contact collector can gather public organization contact addresses from starting websites, with depth and page limits, pause/resume controls and CSV or text export.
Arc's current library includes 236 workflow guides covering programming, design, research, writing, testing, databases, DevOps, AI projects and security. They're instructions that help Arc approach a task; they aren't 236 independently running agents. Examples include frontend design, accessibility, documentation research, API design, testing, code review, threat modeling and brand voice.
You can choose your tools and workflows, enable them individually, and import supported additions from public GitHub repositories. Supported formats include workflows, compatible published local MCP tool servers, and public JSON tools. A workflow that mentions another application doesn't automatically install it, and compatibility depends on the plugin's format and requirements.
Alongside the image tools, the 30-utility local collection includes:
- Development: JSON validation and formatting, JSON comparison, CSV quality checks, CSV-to-JSON conversion, JavaScript source outlines, npm lockfile inventories and text comparisons.
- IT: blank environment templates, redacted log-error summaries, TOML validation, IPv4 subnet planning, URL inspection, supplied HTTP-header review, certificate inspection and SHA-256 checks.
- Gaming and performance: frame-time reports from saved CSV data, render-resolution calculations, field-of-view conversion, eDPI/sensitivity calculations and VRAM allocation planning.
These utilities run locally without their own API keys or another large AI model. You can use the parts that suit your work and leave the rest off.
Memory is another important part of Arc. You can save up to 8,000 Arc editor tokens of preferences, project details and standing instructions, then enable or disable those notes without deleting them. Saved memory notes use Windows account-protected encryption and remain separate from individual conversations.
Arc also keeps saved material on SSD and uses exact and semantic search to retrieve relevant passages. Compress Context helps bring selected evidence into the working window while retaining originals for exact reads. It doesn't mean a small model context suddenly understands an entire enormous archive at once. The interface distinguishes saved material from active context, and larger supported windows remain a choice with their own memory and speed costs.
The desktop tools include approved local-folder access, file creation and editing with backups, supported app launch and closure, Windows diagnostics, and a local calendar with reminders. I'm also expanding natural-language computer questions, so asking about your operating system, RAM, GPU or free drive space can use live readings from your machine.
There are completion notifications, a saved notification inbox, tray operation, local usage reports and thirteen appearance themes. Your saved conversations, preferences and plugin choices are designed to survive application updates.
Hardware requirements will be published clearly. The current local AI catalog targets Windows and compatible NVIDIA GPUs, generally 24 GB-class or larger, with fit depending on the selected model and available VRAM. Development and testing have centered on an RTX 5090; an ordinary 8 GB GPU isn't supported by the current text-model catalog. The setup will show compatibility and resource estimates before you download large weights.
Local model work runs on your PC. Web searches, browsing, optional online plugins and hosted generation use the internet. Arc's local storage doesn't mean every connected service is offline or every kind of stored data is encrypted.
The planned launch is a $25 purchase through my web store, with account-based activation and a license associated with your PC. That purchase and activation system is still part of the release work. There is no public trial planned; I'm spending time testing the full experience first. Arc and its third-party components will retain their respective licensing terms.
I want Arc to be useful whether you're building a website, repairing a script, organizing reference images, researching a project or talking through an idea. The included local toolkit is intended to remain usable on your PC without an ongoing Arc subscription.
If you're interested, follow the project for demonstrations, final hardware requirements and release details. I'd also like to hear which coding or creative workflows you would want to use with Arc.