🟢 Beginner ⚙️ Type: Unified AI Agent Desktop / Cowork App 💸 Free & Open Source (Apache 2.0) ⭐ 28,000+ GitHub Stars
What is AionUi?
AionUi is a massive, open-source desktop application that acts as a unified graphical workspace—or “Cowork platform”—for all of your AI agents. It is widely considered the best free alternative to proprietary enterprise platforms like Claude Cowork.
Historically, if you wanted to use advanced coding agents like Claude Code, OpenCode, or Gemini CLI, you had to run them in isolated, text-only terminal windows. AionUi solves this by wrapping them in a beautiful, cross-platform Electron/React interface. It automatically detects over 20+ different CLI tools installed on your machine and brings them into a single dashboard. You can run multiple agents in parallel, preview the files they generate in real-time, and seamlessly share Model Context Protocol (MCP) tool configurations across all of them.
If you do not have any terminal agents installed, AionUi still works perfectly out of the box. It features its own built-in 24/7 agent that can securely connect to any major API (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Qwen) or run entirely offline using local models via Ollama.
Who is it for?
- Developers juggling multiple command-line AI coding assistants who want a single dashboard to manage their environments, context histories, and API keys.
- Business Professionals looking to automate tedious workflows (like formatting messy Excel files or generating weekly PPT reports) using natural language, without learning how to use a terminal.
- Privacy-Conscious Teams who require 100% local, on-device AI operations to prevent proprietary codebase data from leaking to cloud providers.
- Automation Enthusiasts who want to schedule autonomous background tasks (e.g., “Scrape this website every morning at 9 AM and summarize the results”).
What makes it special?
- 24/7 Scheduled Automation — AionUi translates natural language into Cron expressions. You can tell your agent to run specific data-pulling tasks on a strict schedule, operating entirely unattended in the background.
- Rich File Preview Panel — When an agent generates code, a Markdown file, or a spreadsheet, you don’t have to leave the app. The built-in previewer renders over 30 coding languages, PDFs, HTML, and images instantly.
- Built-in Office Native Editing — Powered by the OfficeCLI engine under the hood, AionUi’s pre-built assistants can autonomously generate and modify native
.docx,.xlsx, and.pptxfiles (even supporting complex Morph transition animations in PowerPoint). - Remote WebUI Access — You do not have to be sitting at your computer to trigger an automation. AionUi can serve a secure local WebUI, allowing you to control your desktop agents from your smartphone, with native push notifications to Telegram, Lark, or DingTalk.
Requirements before you start
AionUi is incredibly lightweight and stores all of its context locally in an SQLite database. You only need:
- Operating System: A modern Windows, macOS (Intel or Apple Silicon), or Linux machine.
- API Keys or Local Models: You will need an API key from an LLM provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, etc.) or a local Ollama installation for offline generation.
- (Optional) CLI Agents: If you have tools like Claude Code, Codex, or OpenCode already installed via npm, AionUi will automatically detect and integrate them.
Step-by-step installation
Step 1 — Download the Application
The easiest way to install AionUi is via the pre-compiled desktop binaries. Go to the official GitHub Releases page and download the installer that matches your operating system (e.g., the .dmg for Mac or .exe for Windows).
Mac users can alternatively install it directly via terminal using Homebrew if preferred.
Step 2 — Configure Your AI Models
Launch the AionUi desktop application. Upon first boot, navigate to the Settings > Models panel.
Here, you can paste in your API keys for various providers. If you are using a local model, select the Ollama tab and ensure your local port (usually http://localhost:11434) is mapped correctly. Because AionUi synchronizes these settings, you only have to configure your keys and MCP servers once, and all your underlying agents will instantly gain access to them.
Step 3 — Launch a Cowork Session
Click on the New Cowork Session button. If you have external agents installed (like Claude Code), they will appear in the dropdown menu. If not, select the “Built-in Agent”.
Type a natural language command, such as: “Read the messy CSV file in my Downloads folder, clean up the duplicate rows, and generate a formatted Excel spreadsheet with a summary chart.”
Watch in the preview panel as the agent autonomously executes the file operations right on your hard drive!
Common errors and fixes
| Error | What it means | How to fix it |
|---|---|---|
| AionUi cannot find my globally installed Claude Code or OpenCode agents | The Electron app is not inheriting your terminal’s custom PATH variables, so it cannot “see” where npm installed your CLI tools. | Open AionUi’s settings and navigate to the Environment PATH section. Manually paste the path to your global npm or python bin directories so AionUi knows where to look. |
| Scheduled Cron tasks fail to execute overnight | Your operating system put the computer or the hard drive to sleep, suspending the AionUi background process. | If you want true 24/7 automation, you must configure your OS power settings to prevent the system from sleeping, or run AionUi on an always-on home server or mini-PC. |
| Cannot access the WebUI from my smartphone | Your computer’s internal firewall is blocking inbound requests to the specific port AionUi uses for its local server. | Ensure your phone and computer are on the exact same Wi-Fi network. Then, go into your Windows Defender or macOS Firewall settings and explicitly allow inbound connections for the AionUi application. |
Free vs Paid comparison
| Feature | AionUi (Open Source) | Claude Cowork (Enterprise Teams) |
|---|---|---|
| Software Cost | $0 (Free forever) | Premium Monthly Subscription |
| Model Flexibility | ✅ Agnostic (Use OpenAI, Gemini, Local LLMs) | 🔴 Locked to Anthropic’s Claude models |
| Data Privacy | 🟢 100% Local SQLite storage | ⚠️ Centralized cloud storage |
| Automated Scheduling | ✅ Yes (Native Cron background tasks) | ❌ No native unattended scheduling |
Bottom line: AionUi completely democratizes the concept of the “AI workforce.” By combining the raw power of command-line autonomous agents with a highly accessible, cross-platform graphical interface, it bridges the gap between software engineers and everyday business users. The fact that it manages your context locally, allows you to use your own API keys, and integrates offline scheduled cron jobs makes it arguably the most powerful free automation desktop tool of 2026.
Alternatives — 3 similar tools
1. Eigent AI
Another rapidly growing open-source “Cowork Desktop” platform that shares a very similar philosophy to AionUi. Eigent focuses heavily on Multi-Agent orchestration, allowing you to spawn a “Browser Agent” and a “Document Agent” that communicate with one another to finish a larger task. While it offers a premium SaaS tier, its open-source core is excellent.
2. n8n (Local)
If you prefer building automations using a visual node-based flowchart rather than relying on an AI agent to figure out the steps autonomously, n8n is the ultimate tool. It is highly robust for connecting hundreds of different APIs and SaaS platforms together, whereas AionUi is better for operating directly on local files and documents on your hard drive.
🔗 n8n.io
3. Claude Code / OpenCode (Terminal)
If you are a developer who actively avoids using a mouse, you can skip the AionUi GUI entirely. Installing Anthropic’s Claude Code or the open-source OpenCode CLI allows you to run powerful, agentic file operations straight from your Bash or Zsh terminal. AionUi actually uses these exact tools under the hood.
🔗 github.com/anthropics/claude-code
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