We're just helping you feed it the data it's craving.
Mac, VPS, or Raspberry Pi. Free on unlimited gateways. A friend's onboarded in 5 minutes.
Why CARAPACE
Context tracking means you can switch between your VPS and your Mac and the AI doesn't get lost. It stays on task, tracks projects, remembers decisions. Work on your server, review on your laptop — same brain, zero re-explaining.
No $20/month ChatGPT. No $200/month enterprise tiers. A VPS, a Raspberry Pi, an old Mac Mini in a closet — whatever hardware you already trust. A free Google API key gets you web search, browser control, code execution, cron jobs, and multi-agent orchestration.
Point your phone camera at anything. Medical imaging, documents, receipts, error messages on a screen — your AI sees it and responds. Live camera feed on iOS, photo upload everywhere.
Power users get headless Linux on a VPS with SSH and cron jobs. Your parents get a Mac app with a guided setup wizard that installs everything automatically. Same platform, different entry points.
This isn't a chat wrapper. It's a full agent runtime with real capabilities.
Install
Each guide is a 3-to-5 step walkthrough. Send the link to a friend — they'll handle the rest.
Ventura and later
Headless / VPS
curl -fsSL https://carapace.info/install.sh | bash
iPhone companion
What people use it for
Point your camera at a letter, an Rx label, a fridge nutrition panel, an X-ray, or an error message on a screen. Live Vision reads it and answers in plain English. Works offline from your phone, over your mesh.
Cron-scheduled agent runs while you sleep. Reads your calendar, checks the weather, scans priority inbox threads, and pushes one clean summary to your phone before you're out of bed.
Hand your VPS agent a half-done task — finish the landing page, triage the inbox, watch a PR for reviewers. Walk away. Come back to a status report. No SSH, no re-prompting.
Set up Mom's Mac once with a free Gemini key. Now she asks her phone instead of asking you. "What does this error mean?" "Translate this menu." "Remind me to take my meds at 8." You get your Saturdays back.
Features
Point your camera at anything. Your AI sees it in real time. Read labels, analyze documents, identify parts, interpret X-rays — whatever's in front of you.
Full hands-free voice interface. Talk naturally while driving, cooking, or working. Vision hits Gemini Flash first — fast and cheap — and only escalates to your full agent when it needs to.
Watch your agents think in real-time. Monitor token usage, subagent trees, active sessions. Kill runaway processes with a tap.
Track workstreams, completion percentages, and scheduled jobs in one view. See what's running in the background without opening a terminal.
Encrypted end-to-end. No cloud relay, no data leaves your mesh. Pair via QR code, connect over Tailscale or direct TLS. Your conversations never touch a third-party server.
Run gateways on your Mac, a VPS, and a Pi. Switch between them with one tap. Saved profiles, zero reconfiguration. One app controls your entire mesh.
Meta Ray-Ban glasses + CARAPACE. Hands-free voice, live vision, every direction you look — all routed through your own gateway.
When Meta opens their SDK, the first 500 CARAPACE supporters on Power or Corporate get a TestFlight invite. No waitlist, no extra cost on top of your one-time purchase — unlock the $7.99 tier or higher in the iOS app before launch and you're in.
What you can do with it
Voice + camera + your own AI's memory. Here's what people actually do with it once it's set up.
Open the fridge, ask. Carapace scans what's there, cross-references your pantry log, and names three things you can cook right now — not 40-minute recipes that assume you have saffron.
Walk the thrift-store aisle with Carapace live. Point at anything interesting — instant eBay sold-listing average, Mercari range, resale spread. "That midcentury lamp? $12 here, $180 sold last week."
Walk your shop or warehouse naming items out loud. Your Mac keeps the spreadsheet live, flags low stock, and drafts reorder emails when a SKU dips below threshold. No clipboards.
Landmark in a new city. Plant at the nursery. Error code on a dishwasher. Mushroom in the woods. Engine noise you can hear but can't describe. Point, ask, get a real answer with sources.
Point at the leak. Carapace walks you through the fix while watching your progress. It remembers your house — "that's the same water heater we looked at in March; the pilot light's on the lower-left panel."
Menu abroad, product label, traffic sign. Translation with context: "this is a regional dialect for…," "this dish is usually served…," "this warning means stop within 50m." Beyond flat Google Translate.
Six examples. Infinite more. Your AI knows what you look at, what you said yesterday, and what's in your tools. Build whatever routine fits your life — it's already in the box.
Pricing
Run CARAPACE on as many Macs, VPSs, and Raspberry Pis as you want — zero cost. The iOS tiers below unlock how many of those gateways a single iPhone can connect to. One-time purchase, no subscriptions.
Free forever
iPhone pairs with 1 gateway. Mac & Linux always unlimited.
Friends & family
iPhone pairs with up to 5 gateways.
Heavy homelab
iPhone pairs with up to 10 gateways.
Small team
iPhone pairs with up to 50 gateways.
Pick your flavor. Each install guide is a short picture-by-picture walkthrough you can send to a non-technical friend.
curl -fsSL https://carapace.info/install.sh | bash