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FrugalAI
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FrugalAI for Mac

A native companion to the dashboard. It keeps today's spend and model mix in your menu bar, and lets you change a routing decision without opening the web app. It reads the same numbers the dashboard does, so there is no second version of the truth.

Download for Mac
Version
0.3.0
Size
382 KB
Requires
macOS 13 or newer, Apple silicon

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Today's spend, without opening a browser

Metered spend, request count, model mix, and how often the model you asked for was the model that answered.

Overrides that leave a record

Pin an organization or a single application to a specific model. Every override goes through a tenant-scoped control token and lands in the audit log.

Application keys without editing config files

Mint a one-time key and copy a ready-made OpenAI or Anthropic configuration. Generated keys carry only the inference scope.

Opening it the first time

This build is not yet notarized by Apple, so macOS will stop it on the first launch. Three steps, once.

  1. 1

    Download and unzip

    The archive expands to FrugalAI.app. Move it to your Applications folder.

  2. 2

    Open it the first time

    macOS will refuse to launch it and say the app cannot be verified. This build is not yet notarized by Apple, so that warning is expected rather than a sign of a damaged download.

  3. 3

    Allow it once

    Open System Settings, go to Privacy and Security, scroll to the message naming FrugalAI, and choose Open Anyway. macOS remembers the choice, so this is a one-time step.

What the app can and cannot reach

The app stores two separate tokens in the macOS Keychain: one that can read usage, and an optional one that can change policies and mint keys. Neither carries the inference scope, so a stolen desktop credential cannot spend your provider credits on model calls. One-time application keys stay in memory and clear after five minutes, on quit, or on demand.

It notices whether the ChatGPT and Claude desktop apps are running, only so it can label that traffic as unmetered. FrugalAI does not intercept, read, or route anything those apps send. Consumer subscriptions are outside the gateway.