SilicIA

Privacy‑focused search assistant for macOS

Fast search. On‑device summaries. No tracking.

SilicIA is a native macOS application that combines DuckDuckGo search with Apple on‑device AI frameworks. It provides a context‑aware experience: scrape web content, analyze PDFs, and rank relevant chunks to answer quickly—without draining your battery.

Explore features How it works Build
Search provider
DuckDuckGo
AI processing
On‑device (NaturalLanguage)
Performance
Optimized for Apple Silicon
Storage
Local chat history (SwiftData)

Features

  • DuckDuckGo integration for privacy‑respecting web search.
  • Tabbed experience: switch between Search Assist and Chat.
  • Concise summaries with direct links to sources.
  • Context‑aware chat: attach URL + PDF context (including drag‑and‑drop PDFs) for retrieval‑augmented answers.
  • Chat history: persistent conversations stored locally with SwiftData.
  • Privacy‑first: no tracking, no data collection (per project README).

How it works

  • Search: enter a query.
  • Fetch: query DuckDuckGo and retrieve top results.
  • Scrape: extract key page content for deeper context.
  • Summarize: on‑device processing via Apple’s NaturalLanguage framework.
  • Present: get a concise answer plus source links.

Technical highlights

  • SwiftUI for the native macOS interface.
  • Foundation networking (URLSession) and caching.
  • NaturalLanguage for tokenization/tagging and extractive summarization.
  • PDFKit for PDF parsing and context extraction.

Requirements & build

  • Requirements: macOS 26+, Apple Silicon, and an internet connection for web searches.
  • Clone: git clone https://github.com/Eddy-Barraud/SilicIA.git
  • Open: open SilicIA.xcodeproj
  • Build: Xcode ⌘B (or ⌘R to run).