BonzAI vs Cumbersome

YOUR PERSONAL LOCAL AI AGENT BonzAI turns your iPhone, iPad, or Mac into a personal AI agent: chat, reason, analyze files, run research, and automate tasks from an interface designed for the Apple ecosystem. YOUR DATA STAYS UNDER CONTROL BonzAI prioritizes local execution when you choose it, and lets you connect external services only when you need them. Your conversations, history, and files remain under your control. By favoring local execution, BonzAI also helps reduce cloud dependency and reliance on energy-hungry remote infrastructure. ANALYZE DOCUMENTS AND IMAGES Summarize, question, and transform PDFs, CSV, JSON, text files, and images. With a compatible model, analysis can stay on your device to help protect the privacy of your content. STAY UP TO DATE WITH THE WEB Run personal research, explore current news, or ask for a clear summary of important trends. BonzAI can use web search to find, compare, and summarize useful information. CONNECT YOUR TOOLS BonzAI can use built-in tools such as weather, web search, and location. With MCP, connect your favorite services such as Home Assistant, Notion, Google Drive, or your own servers — only when you choose to. AUTOMATE WITH SIRI AND SHORTCUTS Use BonzAI with Siri and the Shortcuts app: ask BonzAI, analyze an image, analyze a document, create or open a conversation, prewarm a local model, and build agentic routines. CHOOSE YOUR AI Use Apple Intelligence, local open-source models (such as Gemma, Qwen, Phi, Mistral, Llama, DeepSeek, and more), local servers (such as Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM, or llama.cpp), or remote API providers when you need more power. FOR ADVANCED USERS BonzAI relies on llama.cpp to run efficient GGUF models on Apple devices. Download models from Hugging Face, tune inference parameters, create custom AI personas, and adapt BonzAI to your workflow. BonzAI: the AI agent that takes root on your devices, not in the cloud.

IMPORTANT: Requires your own API keys from OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter, Google AI Studio, Z.ai, or Vercel AI Gateway, or your own OpenAI-compatible endpoint. I built Cumbersome because consumer AI apps kept dumbing things down. Cumbersome is the manual transmission of AI apps: more complex, but with far greater control. WHY I BUILT THIS Consumer AI providers like ChatGPT and Claude route requests to cheaper models to keep their costs down. They charge monthly subscriptions whether you use them once or a thousand times. They hide the technical controls that let you tune how models respond. And they lock you into one provider. I wanted an AI client that connects directly to AI provider APIs. I wanted to pick exactly which model I use and know I'm getting it. I wanted to compare different models on the same prompt. I wanted to pay per use instead of subscriptions. So I built it. This is the app I use every day to interact with AI, so I pay attention and try to get it right. SUPPORTED PROVIDERS Bring your API keys, or add your own OpenAI-compatible endpoint, for any of the following: — ChatGPT / OpenAI — Claude / Anthropic — Gemini / Google AI Studio — OpenRouter multi-provider — Vercel AI Gateway multi-provider — Z.ai — OpenAI-compatible custom endpoints, including Ollama, Azure, LM Studio, Groq, Together, and self-hosted backends WHAT YOU GET — A free app. — A versatile API client. One app, every major provider and model. — Total control. Pick your model, tune the parameters, switch providers mid-conversation. — Compare models head to head. Stream multiple chats in parallel and let an AI judge pick the best. — Bring your own tools. Local browser use, reasoning, web search, image generation. — Rich, editable conversations. Markdown, LaTeX, code blocks, attachments, edit and export anything. — Private by design. iCloud sync across devices. Nothing saved to our servers. — Native and accessible on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. MAJOR FEATURES ADDED IN 2026 Highlights only. See What's New on the App Store for the latest. 2026-07-02: Chat appearance themes and reading fonts (Serif, Rounded, Mono). 2026-06-28: Folder-level system message presets. 2026-06-24: Prompt caching, with cache usage shown across providers. 2026-06-17: Reusable system message presets per conversation. 2026-06-16: Offload long system messages to iCloud Drive. 2026-06-15: Pause custom API parameters with a toggle. 2026-06-11: Compact a conversation to lower API costs. 2026-06-07: Run JavaScript and HTML directly from Cumbersome. 2026-06-04: Choose how OpenRouter parses PDFs and which search engine it uses. 2026-05-12: Configurable Quick Prompt shortcut and App Visibility on Mac. 2026-05-09: Conversation folders. Group, move, and organize chats. 2026-05-03: Collapsible sidebar sections, synced across devices. 2026-04-22: AI image generation with OpenAI and Gemini. 2026-04-18: Local browser tool use. AI can search and browse pages. 2026-04-11: Headless mode. The AI works the browser in the background. 2026-04-03: Searchable model picker for long model lists. 2026-03-15: Extended thinking and reasoning across providers. 2026-03-09: Auto-delete conversations after a set number of days. 2026-02-28: OpenAI-compatible custom providers (Ollama, Azure, LM Studio, Groq). 2026-02-25: Only Search When Requested. Keep web search off until you ask. 2026-02-24: Image paste, interactive attachment previews, and PDF thumbnails. 2026-02-21: Siri and Shortcuts integration. 2026-02-20: Vercel AI Gateway support, with model exclusion filters. 2026-02-06: Voice Control, Larger Text, and higher contrast. 2026-01-11: Major accessibility pass. VoiceOver, Dynamic Type, keyboard nav. 2026-01-06: OpenRouter multi-provider integration. THE DEAL The app is free. You pay providers directly for API access. I'm Peter, an indie developer in Reno, Nevada, out among the high desert tumbleweed. No VC money. No growth hacking. Just a tool I wanted to exist.