Hey r/macapps — back with a fresh writeup for **Canto v0.8.0**, the biggest UX change since launch. The headline this time is **Canto Chat**: opening Canto now greets you with a real chat, not a blank note.

The video above shows the new flow: type a question, pick a scope (your vault, the current note, or the open web), and Canto Chat answers with inline citations that link back to the source. Drop a PDF, an image, or a video into the conversation and it can quote the right page or timestamp back to you.

## What's new in 0.8.0 (the highlights)

- **Canto Chat — a real chat home.** The welcome screen has been rebuilt around a centered composer. Type, hit send, and you're in a real persistent chat session. No stray panes, no scaffolding documents.
- **Searchable chat history in the sidebar.** Every chat lives next to your notes. Full-text search across past transcripts, pin/rename/edit-and-regenerate, and a Trash lifecycle just like notes.
- **Vault grounding with citations.** Point chat at All notes or just the current note and Canto pulls relevant snippets through a search-then-read flow. Replies carry inline `[1]`, `[2]` markers that link back to the source note.
- **Web Search and Web Research modes.** Search mode does quick lookups + URL extraction with a Sources tray. Research mode can map a site and crawl deeper for thorough answers, behind a one-tap approval before anything is fetched.
- **Durable attachments — PDFs, text, images, audio, video.** Drop files into a chat and they're stored in your vault, not just RAM. PDFs cite by page, audio/video transcribe on-device with Whisper and cite by **timestamp**, images are described and indexed.
- **Direct local vision.** If your local model is vision-capable, attached images go straight to it so it can actually *see* them — not just read a transcript of what they contained.
- **Shared Library tab.** A new sidebar lane that collects every file you've ever attached — to a chat or a note — in one searchable, deduplicated place. Same file in three places, one copy on disk.
- **Note edits hand off to the Agent Panel.** Canto Chat itself never silently rewrites your notes. When you ask for an edit, it opens that note's docked Agent Panel with a drafted prompt — you decide when to send.
- **Dictate from the home composer.** The mic button now lives on the welcome composer and inside Canto Chat, sharing the same on-device dictation engine the document Agent Panel already uses.
- **Floating update pills.** Update prompts and "What's New" no longer push the editor down with a full-width banner — they float as compact pills above the content.

## New here? Here's what Canto actually is

A native macOS notebook with a private AI built in:

- **Notes & code notebooks** — rich-text notes plus Jupyter-style notebooks that run **Python, JavaScript, and TypeScript** locally. No Docker, no extra installs.
- **Agent Chat** — a per-note AI panel that can read your note, search your vault, fetch URLs you paste, and edit your document with highlights showing exactly what changed. Runs against the bundled local models or any external endpoint you configure.
- **`@mentions` and slash commands** — type `@` to pull any note into the AI's context as a reference, and `/` for an inline command menu (templates, AI actions, code blocks, math, callouts, and more) without leaving the keyboard.
- **WikiLinks & a real knowledge graph** — `[[Note Title]]` autocompletes, builds backlinks automatically, and renders as an interactive Cytoscape graph of how your ideas connect.
- **Memory Links** — a semantic layer on top of your vault using on-device MiniLM embeddings. Canto surfaces related notes you forgot about and powers RAG-style autocomplete while you write.
- **Live Transcription** — talk into your Mac and Canto streams the transcript straight into the active note, using on-device Whisper. Works offline, no cloud round-trips.
- **Web Research** — Tavily-backed search, URL extraction, site mapping, and deep crawls, all behind a one-tap approval before anything leaves the device. Sources tray shows exactly what was fetched.
- **Daily Notes** — auto-created per-day pages with a calendar and journaling templates baked in.
- **Vault manager** — folders, drag-and-drop reparenting, bulk move, multi-select, pinned notes, soft-delete with Trash, full-text search across the whole vault.
- **Split panes & tabs** — up to 3 panes side by side, each with independent tabs, so you can write, reference, and chat in the same window.
- **iCloud Drive Sync** — opt-in encrypted sync of your full vault across Macs through your own iCloud Drive. Encrypted with your vault passphrase before it touches iCloud.
- **Markdown import, plus Markdown / PDF / HTML export** — drag any folder of `.md` files into the sidebar to import as real notes, and export any note (or your whole vault) as polished Markdown, PDF, or HTML.
- **Built-in MCP server** — Canto exposes itself as an MCP server, so Claude Code (or any MCP client) can read and edit your vault directly.
- **External models too** — Ollama, LM Studio, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint works as an alternative to the bundled local models.

## Local models that ship in the box

All run via Metal GPU through llama-server, all support tool-calling. Refreshed in 0.7.9 around the **Unsloth** GGUF family:

- **Granite 4.1 3B** (≈2.1 GB) — compact default for tools, RAG, and multilingual chat
- **Qwen 3.5 4B** (≈2.7 GB) — fast everyday chat, coding, and **vision** (with projector)
- **Qwen 3.5 9B** (≈5.7 GB) — stronger writing, planning, multi-step tasks, and **vision**
- **GPT-OSS 20B** (≈11.6 GB) — fast tool-first reasoning specialist
- **Qwen 3.6 27B** (≈16.8 GB) — large dense model with **vision** support
- **GLM-4.7 Flash** (≈18.3 GB) — high-performance MoE for reasoning, coding, and agents
- **Qwen 3.6 35B A3B** (≈22.1 GB) — agentic coding and deep analysis MoE with **vision**
- **GPT-OSS 120B** (≈62.8 GB) — flagship MoE for high-reasoning agent workflows
- **Qwen 3.5 122B A10B** (≈76.5 GB) — research-grade tool-heavy reasoning MoE

## Pricing & privacy

- **Free forever** for notes, wikilinks, code notebooks, knowledge graph, daily notes, split panes, full-text search, and basic on-device chat.
- **$29.99 one-time** for unlimited AI — no subscription, ever.
- **Encrypted local SQLite database, AES-256 at rest. Zero cloud uploads** for your notes.

## System requirements

- macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later
- Apple Silicon (M1+) — Metal GPU required
- 8 GB RAM minimum (16 GB+ recommended for the bigger models)

## Links

- Canto: https://lonelyduck.io/canto
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lonelyduck/
- Site: https://lonelyduck.io
- Terms of Service: https://lonelyduck.io/legal/terms
- Privacy Policy: https://lonelyduck.io/legal/privacy
- Canto Releases: https://github.com/deokwons9004dev/Canto-Releases/releases
- Join the Discord Server: https://discord.gg/afDUSKTYNf

Happy to answer questions in the comments!

[macOS] Canto v0.8.0 — meet Canto Chat: a private chat home with vault + web grounding