Run local AI on your Mac, and reach it from anywhere

How do you run AI locally on a Mac?

You run the model or the agent as an ordinary app on the Mac itself, using Apple silicon's unified memory rather than a rented GPU. For local models that usually means a runner like Ollama, LM Studio or an MLX-based tool, where the model weights sit on your disk and inference happens on your machine. For coding agents it usually means a command-line agent running in a terminal, against your real checkout, with your toolchain and credentials already in place.

The constraint is memory, not cleverness. Model size is what decides whether something runs comfortably, so a Mac with more unified memory runs larger models; a base configuration will be happier with smaller ones. Beyond that the appeal is straightforward: your code and data never leave the machine, there is no per-hour VM you forgot to shut down, and the agent works against your actual environment instead of a blank sandbox you rebuild every time.

Should you give an AI agent access to your computer?

Cautiously, and with a way to stop it. An agent that can control your computer is useful precisely because it can act without asking, and that is the same reason it deserves limits. The sensible posture is to scope what it can touch, keep it away from credentials it does not need, prefer a directory it can safely make a mess in, and never leave a destructive action on autopilot because approving each one got tedious.

The other half is supervision. Most agent trouble is not dramatic; it is a long, quiet detour in the wrong direction, or a run that stopped forty minutes ago waiting for a yes or no. Being able to read the output and kill the process is worth more than any amount of configuration you set beforehand. That argues for keeping a terminal you can reach from wherever you happen to be, which is the specific gap Servey fills.

Why this is a real problem now

Coding agents and long-running local tasks have made it normal to start something on your Mac and walk away. The work is autonomous but not unattended: agents pause for approval, hit an error and stop, or head off in a direction you would have corrected in five seconds if you had been watching.

The gap between something needing attention and you being able to give it is where the time goes.

Keeping a human in the loop from a phone

The practical requirement is small. You need to see the output, type a response, and be able to stop the thing. All three fit comfortably in a terminal, which is why a reachable shell is worth more here than a full desktop.

Servey gives you that shell on your own Mac without an SSH setup, and adds the screen for the cases where reading the log is not enough.

• Approve or decline an action the agent is waiting on.
• Watch output long enough to tell progress from a loop.
• Kill a process before it does something expensive.

Why it runs on your own machine

Running agents locally keeps your code and credentials on hardware you control, and lets them use the tools already installed on your Mac. That is exactly why losing access when you leave the house is annoying: the work is local by design, and so is the machine.

Servey does not move any of that anywhere. It gives you a way back to the Mac the work is already happening on.

Being honest about scope

Servey does not run, schedule, or manage agents. It has no opinion about which ones you use and no integration with any of them. It gives you a terminal and a screen on your Mac; whatever you run there is entirely your business.

It is also pre-launch. Nothing here is a report of how it performs in practice, because nobody outside the team has used it yet.