AI System 6 is a writing desk for your browser and your Mac, built on the rules of a 1988 Macintosh. Your sources, questions, drafts, and finished file each have a place you can see. The model may help, but it never quietly takes the pen.
Opens in your browser · Mac beta for Apple silicon · Free and MIT open source
Three ways
There are three ways to write with AI.
You ask it to smooth out a paragraph. What comes back really is smoother. You paste it in and send it. The next day you reread it, and you cannot find yourself in it.
01
Write in a chat box
The answer is right there, one copy away from your draft. From then on, its words and yours are the same words.
02
Let it fill in your editor
Suggestions grow inside your sentences. Some editors color the machine's words; change a few letters and they count as yours.
03
Write at a desk
The model gets a window of its own, and what it writes stays in that window. To reach your work, it has to be carried there by you.
The difference isn't how clever the model is. It's whether its words pass through your hands.
One desk
Expression edits keep your conditions, sources and judgment intact. Ask only to flag issues and the suggestions stay in ClioTalk, without replacing your text. Ask explicitly for Taiwan usage to adapt it; Traditional characters alone do not select a regional voice. Results from a cancelled request or a different project cannot overwrite your draft. Model-output comparisons are still pending.
Every window does one job.
Scroll, and the camera walks across a real screenshot of the desk.
Photographed in the running app, with no AI model connected.
01
Searcher finds sources
It brings back titles, sites, and snippets: doors, not answers. To read the original, it hands you to Reader.
02
Scrapbook keeps only what you chose
Every clip remembers where it came from. The name was already on the first Mac, in 1984.
03
The model lives in ClioTalk
It can talk, suggest, and draft. Every word it writes stays in this window first. Here no model is connected, and the rest of the desk works anyway.
04
Your manuscript lives in TeachText
Words arrive here only when you put them here. Save, clip, insert, export: each one is a key you press.
05
Review Desk reads it back
Before the work leaves, it points out shaky facts, loose structure, and the sentences that have started to sound like a model.
06
What you bring in rides on a floppy
PDFs, pages, and recordings go on the File Floppy. They are reference for this piece of work, and never quietly become part of the project.
The one rule
Nothing saves itself.
A model reply is still only a reply. It becomes part of the work only when you save, clip, insert, or export it.
Output arrives temporary
You can read it, reject it, or decide where it belongs without changing the manuscript.
You choose the destination
Question Sheet, Outline, the current section, TeachText, Scrapbook, or a new project file.
Sources keep their identity
Searcher finds a source door. Reader opens the original. Scrapbook keeps only the passages you chose.
Back from a Walk in Quick Draft accepts a pasted transcript and keeps spoken marks as verbatim quotations. Confirm to add it as File Floppy material; your manuscript stays as you wrote it.
The desk reports what happened
Saved, searched, clipped, reviewed: the desk records these when they actually happen. A model does not get to say them for you.
How you write
One piece of writing. Eight places you can see.
You carry one piece of writing from the first source to the finished file. Each stop along the way does one job, and you can always see which stop you are at.
Photographed in the running app, with no AI model connected.
Field Notes
This desk's first line came from George R.R. Martin.
He writes A Song of Ice and Fire in WordStar 4.0, on a DOS machine that isn't connected to the internet, because it does what a writing program should and nothing else. AI System 6 was built overnight in May 2026, its first design document opens with his words, and every feature since has a story of its own.
System 6 gave this desk its grammar: things you can see, saving on purpose, one job per window. The same desk then wears ten eras of Mac design, from 1988 to 2026. Windows gain shadows, then gloss, then glass. A file is still a file. Save still means save.
Appearances
10 eras · 2 branches 1 desk the same files
Interfaces age. Objects do not.
Choose a year in the list, or from the Special menu, and the whole page travels there with you.
The other road
A branch that became the trunk.
While the Mac was still running System 7, NeXT, the company Steve Jobs started after leaving Apple, was building a different desk: gray, beveled, black title bars, applications lined up in a Dock down the right edge. The first web browser was written on one. At the end of 1996 Apple bought NeXT, and NeXTSTEP became the foundation of Mac OS X. The Aqua above grew out of it.
NeXTSTEP1995. The same files, on the desk the modern Mac grew from.
AI System 6 wears it as a branch, not a stop on the line: the same files and the same rules, on the desk the modern Mac grew from. Choose it from the Special menu.
Rootline, Joyride and Plaintext now have artwork throughout the twelve appearances. Image Prompt Studio, Lightroom and the four games also have their own Big Sur and NeXTSTEP icons, redrawn individually with Image Gen and fitted to native sizes. These are original adaptations to each era.
Endfield Terminal now searches 332 missions, 32 operators, 349 tutorials, 548 lore entries and 76 central documents from the refreshed v1.5 archive, including dialogue and radio. Older retained evidence keeps its original dates. Danqingdu preparation is ready for the announced October 15 update; previews are kept out of story answers.
Drawing Board1998. An unreleased Mac OS 8.5 theme: pencil lines on drafting paper, the same objects underneath.
Drawing Board is the second branch: visible here and in the Appearances list, never a stop on the 1988-2026 dissolve. System 7, Tiger and Lion are stops on that line. All four are regular Special-menu choices.
After hours
When you stop writing, it's still a whole computer.
Games in windows, the desk accessories, and tools a quiet desk still has room for. Every picture here is a photograph of the running app.
It also runs DOOM.
Three open-source classics, each in its own window beside your manuscript. Further down the desk: our own town-building trilogy and Plaintext, an original visual novel.
MicropolisJan 1900. $20,000. Welcome, Mayor.OpenTTD 运输大亨1950, in Chinese, mid-game.DOOMEngine ready. Bring your own demons.
Calculator, puzzle, writing bell, alarm clock, dictation pad, memory cards. The small tools that say the desk was made with care.
Calculator
Adds up, in a beveled window.
Puzzle
The sliding-tile puzzle, mid-move.
Writing Bell
A Pomodoro timer that rings like 1988.
Alarm Clock
Winds up, goes off, looks the part.
Dictation Pad
Speak into the field you are already in.
Memory Cards
Flip two, find the pair.
Quiet on purpose. Not small.
Things a Quiet Writing Desk Can Still Make Room For
12 items 2 floppies on demand
Photographs of the real app, running. No mockups anywhere on this page.
Three original games
Build a town. Then find your way through it.
First, a street. Then a neighbourhood. Then the question of how everyone gets home. Bonsai City, Rootline and Joyride were made for this desk: three games that let you build a place, draw its journeys, and take the long way back.
01 · Bonsai CityMake room for a town. Lay roads, zone the blocks and keep the lights on. Hezhou, 1952, is one place to begin.02 · RootlineGive people a way across. Draw metro, rapid-bus and bus lines; get passengers home before the stations fill up.03 · JoyrideCome down to street level. Take a car through the town you built, change the radio, and see what the map could not show.
One town can travel between all three. Rootline rehearses a transport plan; Joyride drives through a snapshot. Both leave your Bonsai City save untouched.
You can write for someone. Can you choose for them?
Plaintext. A ghostwriter, a cartographer, and a place at the lighthouse she never asked for. You choose what to say and what to pass on. At each chapter's end, someone else's eyes take you back through the same journey.
明文 · PlaintextThe ghostwriter and the cartographer. A story about speaking plainly, carrying messages, and where care becomes interference.
Written in Chinese. Read at your own pace, revisit the dialogue, and keep your saves in this browser. Open Applications → Games → 明文 to begin.
Turn source text into a diagram or slide deck. Keep editing the result, and keep the source close by. AI drafting needs a connected model; check its work before sharing.
Draw from the source
ClioChart offers diagram candidates to choose from. Edit the diagram and read the source sentence behind each element.
Edit the slide itself
ClioStage drafts slides from your text. Edit each page in place. Print Preview and printing use the same layout.
Keep the parts editable
ClioPaint, Cover Glass and Text Lightroom work with layers. Move artwork as an editable copy. Each editor keeps its own undo history; you choose when to sync a changed original.
Find your window
Dock previews show an app's windows before you choose one. In Mac OS X appearances, the Dock starts off; enable it in the Control Panel. Big Sur and the other appearances keep their own controls.
Review Desk keeps comments attached to the manuscript's words. ASCII storyboards need a connected model; their real-model acceptance steps are still pending.
Return to the right window.
Window previews help you return to the right work. Hover over a Dock app or select a window in All Windows to see its picture; older captures are labelled. Slide an original window to either edge and fold it into a named tab, or link two visible windows with one adjustable divider. Pin controls can temporarily release and restore pinned windows together. These actions work across all twelve appearances; hidden work stays hidden, and arrangements that do not fit leave the windows unchanged.
A music quiz
One More Tune. Name the ad from the song.
One More Tune puts an Apple ad on a white-label record. Listen, choose, and follow ten track positions through the round. Come back later and continue with all ten questions at the place you reached. Two more rounds follow Apple's keynotes: Relay, about the people who handed the stage to one another, and Next Act, about what a famous line was doing and what came after it. An unofficial quiz, made by a fan.
One More TuneTen tracks, one record, your next tune.
The desk you boot into fits in what two 1.44 MB floppy disks once held. The AI model is a separate and far larger thing, and which one you use stays your choice. The same system also carries thirty-six finished project disks, real sample projects you can open and take apart. Each has an address of its own, under the same rule every window follows, so a disk can be passed to a friend as one link: /go/dtk, /go/m5mba, /go/pocket. The whole shelf is one link too, /go/disks, and it opens on the newest disk, ready to read.
Your model
Choose the model. Keep the workspace.
Run a model on your own computer, or use a cloud service you choose. The menu bar always says which. Here it says none, and the desk still works.
LM StudioOllamaDeepSeekAny OpenAI-compatible
Before you boot
Your words stay on your machine.
Read Me
Do I need to connect an AI model first?
No. With no model connected, the desk still opens, writes, saves, and exports. When you want AI, connect one in Control Panel: LM Studio or Ollama on your own computer, DeepSeek, or any OpenAI-compatible service.
What role does the AI play on this desk?
A companion, not a partner: it keeps you company while you write, but it doesn't share the say over the work. In practice:
It asks; it doesn't answer for you. With the Question Sheet open, press Interview me in SideAsk and the model asks one question at a time, only what you alone can answer: what you saw, who this is for, what someone actually said. It suggests no wording, drafts nothing, praises nothing, and your answer goes into the sheet as you wrote it. In Quick Draft it doesn't decide your point, your stance, or your title either; a title can only appear as a suggestion.
You bring the bones; what it adds waits for your yes. In Section Drafts the model writes only the section you picked. It shows you the result first, and it goes into the draft only once you confirm, marked AI Assisted.
Your words are not paraphrased. Dictation Pad's Shape only breaks what you said into lines and paragraphs, and changes not one word; if it would have to, it does nothing and tells you why. Imported chats and venting count as material to write from, never as checked fact.
It helps you check the piece reaches people. Before it goes out, you can open your own draft in DocMap as a map, or use Listen to hear it read back one beat at a time, marking where a listener would get lost.
Where does my writing live?
Your projects stay in this browser, on this computer. A local model keeps requests on your machine; cloud requests follow the policy of the provider you choose. The server keeps no second project database, and your keys never go into project files, conversations, backups, or exports.
What does it cost?
Nothing. AI System 6 is free and MIT open source. If you use a cloud model, what you pay is between you and that provider.
Does it work on a phone or an iPad?
Yes, upright or sideways. On an iPhone you can add it to the Home Screen and open it like an app.
How is the Mac app different?
It is the same desk. The Mac beta brings everything it needs to run, so you download it and open it; the browser version needs no install at all.
Why does it look like a 1988 Mac?
Its manners come from WordStar, the program George R.R. Martin still writes on: it does the writing and nothing else. Its shape comes from System 6, in 1988, because a desk of things you can see is the clearest way to show what AI would otherwise hide: which conversation is temporary, what you kept, what the model can see. It is not made by Apple.
