A morning brief
Today's meetings, clashes, what's due, and the few emails that actually need you.
A private assistant that lives on your Mac
Your email and calendar,
finally answering you.
Ask what's on tomorrow, what Dana said about Thursday, or who you still owe a reply. Overcoat reads your mail and calendar on your own computer, drafts replies in your voice, and never sends a thing.
Free · Mac with Apple silicon and 16 GB of memory · about 20 minutes to set up
Anything I should know about this week?
Three things: the partner review moved to Thursday 2pm, you told Dana you'd send the pricing deck by then, and your flight to London leaves Thursday 5:30pm, so you'll want to leave by 3:15.
Draft a reply to Dana saying the deck is coming Wednesday
✉️ Draft to Dana Ruiz · Re: Partner review
Hey Dana, the deck will be in your
inbox Wednesday. See you Thursday. –J
Save to Gmail Drafts
Everything you'd ask an assistant
Drafts in your voice
"Reply to Isabel saying Saturday works." It reads the whole thread and your calendar, writes like you, and saves to Gmail Drafts when you tap.
Calendar, by asking
"Add dinner with Sam Friday at 7." You check the card and tap. Nobody is ever invited for you.
What's on your plate
Promises you made in sent mail, replies you're waiting on, bills coming due, packages on the way.
Trips that plan themselves
Flights and hotels pulled from confirmation emails, with check-in and leave-by reminders.
Exact answers
"Who do I email most?" "Which newsletters do I get?" Counted across all your mail, not guessed from a search.
Private because of how it's built
Not a promise in a policy. Each of these is enforced by the software and its permissions.
It drafts. It never sends.
Reading access is read-only. Saving a draft or adding an event uses separate, narrow permissions, only when you tap. There is no code that sends email.
Your data stays home.
Mail, calendar and conversations live in an encrypted database on your Mac, answered by AI running there too.
Claude is optional, and sees placeholders.
Turn it on for harder questions and names, emails and numbers are swapped for tokens first; health, legal and password details never go. About a cent a question, capped.
Your phone, your network.
The phone app reaches your Mac over your own private Tailscale network, with a passkey. Nothing is exposed to the internet.
A watchdog that only looks.
Every 15 minutes it checks nothing is happening that shouldn't: no unexpected forwarding rules, no writes you didn't tap, no strays.
No account, no server, no us.
There's no Overcoat cloud. You create your own Google key, and everything runs on hardware you own.
Install it
No Terminal. The app walks you through everything, and each step checks itself.
You'll need
- A Mac with Apple silicon (M1 or later) and 16 GB of memory
- A Gmail account (Google Calendar comes with it)
- Your phone, for the app and notifications (Android or iPhone)
- About 20 minutes, most of it the Google step and a model download
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Download and open
Download Overcoat, unzip it, and drag Overcoat into Applications. The first time, right-click it and choose Open (it isn't notarized by Apple yet). It gets ready for a minute or two, then opens the guided setup in your browser.
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About you and local AI
Your name and time zone, then one click installs Ollama and downloads the AI models (about 7 GB) that run on your Mac.
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Connect Gmail and Calendar
The fiddliest part, about 10 minutes: you create a free Google Cloud project so the key is yours, not ours. The page has a button for each Google screen and says exactly what to click. Optional: allow saving drafts and adding events.
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Your phone
Install Tailscale on the Mac and your phone, then scan a QR code. The phone app installs from the browser and signs in with a passkey.
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Keep it running, back it up
One click keeps Overcoat running in the background; another sets up encrypted backups to a drive you choose. Voice notes and Claude are optional extras.
Questions
What does it cost?
Overcoat is free. The local AI is free. If you turn on Claude, you pay Anthropic directly for what you use: about a cent per question with the default cap, with daily and monthly limits you set. Web search is optional and similar.
Can it send email for me?
No. It prepares drafts and saves them to Gmail Drafts when you tap; you send from Gmail. That's a hard rule in the software, checked every time it's built.
What happens when my Mac is asleep?
The phone app queues what you send and delivers it when the Mac is back. A Mac that stays on (a Mac mini is ideal) makes it always available.
Does anything go to the cloud?
Only if you turn on Claude or web search, and only the minimum, with names swapped out. Everything Overcoat sends is listed in the app exactly as it went.
How do I remove it?
Settings → Devices → Lock down revokes its Google access and keys; then delete the app and the ~/assistant folder.
Like it? Buy me a coffee ☕
Overcoat is a one-person project, free to use. If it saves you time, a tip says thanks.
Opens Venmo · @jeffmyers1234