Marlo

Derived from OpenWorker

Marlo is a Qumge distribution of OpenWorker by Andrew Ng, used under the MIT License. Copyright (c) 2024 Andrew Ng — see LICENSE.

Upstream is the real project and where the engine is built. If you want the unmodified original, go there: https://github.com/andrewyng/openworker

What Marlo changes. OpenWorker asks you to pick a model provider and paste an API key before you can start. That is the right default for developers and the wrong one for the people Marlo is for — marketers, operators, founders without an engineer. Marlo replaces that first screen with a Qumge sign-in: one click, no key to paste, every model behind it.

Everything else is upstream's work. Fixes that aren't Qumge-specific go back to them.

qumge.com · Download · Issues

AI that gets your everyday tasks done. Marlo is an open-source AI coworker that lives on your desktop and delivers finished work, not just chat: your code reviewed for vulnerabilities with fixes ready to go, a polished document, a Slack reply with the numbers, a triaged inbox. It ships specialist Security coworkers first — attackers already use AI, and defenders deserve the same leverage, governed.

It runs on your machine and doesn't lock you into any model: bring your own API key for OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or an open-weight provider, or run fully local with Ollama. Your data leaves your machine only through the model and integrations you choose. Every action an agent takes is governed and logged — see Governed by design.

How Marlo works

qumge.com — signed and notarised for macOS, so it opens on the first double-click. There is a Windows build too; it carries no Authenticode signature yet, so Windows warns on first run.

Every release, with checksums and the auto-update manifest: github.com/Qumge/marlo/releases/latest.

Prefer to run from source? See Run from source.

Pick a coworker, point it at real work, get a finished deliverable:

• Security review - scan a codebase and its dependencies for real risk. Findings come from deterministic scanners (like semgrep) plus model reasoning; proposed fixes are re-scanned and diff-reviewed before you approve them - the fixer is never the only checker.
• Cloud posture - audit cloud configuration against common misconfiguration classes and draft the remediation plan.
• Incident triage - work a security or ops incident: gather context across your tools, draft the timeline, prepare the report.
• Everyday work - prep a customer call from your CRM and inbox, turn scattered notes into a shippable plan, produce documents and spreadsheets, keep your calendar and Slack threads handled.
• Standing automations - a morning brief, a weekly report, a watch over a channel - on a schedule, with full transcripts.

Specialist coworkers arrive with the tools, working style, and check-ins for one job already set up. Security coworkers ship first.

1. Tell Marlo the outcome you want - "prepare a customer brief," "untangle my calendar," "draft a report," "check where the release stands across Jira and GitHub."
2. It breaks the task into steps and works across your desktop, files, and connected apps.
3. Before anything consequential - sending a message, changing a calendar, running a command - it checks in and you approve or redirect.
4. You get the finished deliverable, not a to-do list.

Under the hood:

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Marlo desktop app │ native shell + GUI
├────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ local agent server (Python) │ engine · tools · connectors - built on aisuite
├───────────────┬────────────────┬───────────────┤
│ your files │ your tools │ your model │ everything runs with your keys,
│ & terminal │ 25+ connectors │ any provider │ on your machine
└───────────────┴────────────────┴───────────────┘

Governance is the architecture, not a plugin - the agent can't grant itself new permissions, and no prompt can talk it past a gate. Three tiers, all in this repo:

1. Hard floors. A set of dangerous and irreversible operations is human-only, always. No mode - including full auto-approve - lowers these floors; they always escalate to you.
2. A ladder of earned autonomy. Actions are approval-gated by default. One-off approvals can graduate into standing rules, then into config allowlists - each step explicit, visible, and revocable. In auto-approve mode a reviewer model lets routine actions through and escalates anything it isn't sure about to you; repeated denials trip a circuit breaker that pauses the reviewer and hands control back. Reviewer verdicts are judgments, not guarantees - the floors and the audit trail are what backstop them.
3. An audit trail that answers "who did this, and why?" Every tool call is recorded with its approval provenance - auto-approved, user-approved, or denied, with the reviewer's reasoning attached - and persisted with the conversation.

Unattended runs never self-approve: their asks park in an inbox until a human answers. Found a vulnerability? See SECURITY.md.

• Produce real deliverables - documents, spreadsheets, reports, and web pages land as files you can open and share.
• Work from Slack - mention @OpenWorker in a channel; a session opens on your desktop, the work happens with your tools, and the answer comes back as a thread reply.
• Use your everyday tools - 25+ integrations including GitHub, Slack, Jira, Notion, Linear, HubSpot, Outlook, monday.com, Gmail, and Google Calendar, plus your terminal and local files. Any tool reachable over MCP plugs in too, with per-tool control.
• Run on a schedule - automations for recurring work: a morning brief, a weekly report, a standing watch over a channel. Runs land in the app with full transcripts.
• Ask before acting - writes, sends, and shell commands are approval-gated, with an optional auto-approve mode that still escalates anything uncertain - see Governed by design.

Model access is yours: pick a provider, paste your key, switch anytime. Supported out of the box:

Qumge · OpenAI · Anthropic · Google Gemini · BytePlus Ark · Volcengine Ark Agent Plan · Inkling (Thinking Machines) · GLM (Z.ai) · DeepSeek · Kimi (Moonshot) · Qwen · MiniMax · Mistral · Grok (xAI) - plus open-weight models via Together and Fireworks, and fully local models via Ollama.

A curated model list marks what we've verified for tool-calling work. Adding any model string works at your own risk.

Marlo is local-first. Everything lives on your machine: the agent loop, your conversations, connector tokens, and model keys - all in the app's local secret store. The only cloud piece is a small service that brokers OAuth handshakes for connectors. You can always use the App without signing-in - use the connectors via manually-created credentials/API-keys.

Prerequisites: Python 3.10+, Node 20+, and (for the desktop shell) the Rust toolchain via rustup.

git clone https://github.com/Qumge/marlo
cd marlo
# 1. One-time bootstrap - creates the Python venv at .venv
# (on Windows, run from Git Bash or WSL)
bash packaging/setup_dev_env.sh
# 2. Start the local agent server
.venv/bin/openworker-server --cwd ~/some/project --port 8765
# (Windows: .venv\Scripts\openworker-server.exe)
# 3. In a second terminal, start the UI
cd surfaces/gui
npm install
npm run dev # browser UI on the Vite dev port

The standalone server creates a per-launch token at <state-dir>/sidecar-8765.token; Vite reads that user-only file when it starts. For direct API calls, send its value in the X-OpenWorker-Token header. The desktop app uses an in-memory launch token instead and never writes it to disk.

To run the full desktop app instead of the browser UI, replace step 3 with npm run tauri dev (from surfaces/gui/) - the Tauri shell launches the window and supervises the server itself.

Tests: .venv/bin/pytest (server), npm test and npm run e2e in surfaces/gui (GUI unit + hermetic end-to-end). Desktop bundles are built with packaging/build_dmg.sh / packaging/build_windows.ps1.

OpenWorker's engine is built on aisuite, a lightweight Python library providing a unified chat-completions API across LLM providers and an agents layer with tools, toolkits, and MCP support. If you want to build your own agent harness rather than use ours, start there; this repo is a working reference for what aisuite can carry.

OpenWorker was originally developed inside the aisuite repository before moving to its own home here; thanks to the aisuite contributors whose work it builds on.

Contributions are welcome - open a pull request. Bugs in Marlo go to our issues; bugs in the underlying engine are usually upstream's. The app updates itself, so fixes reach installs quickly. For any PR, please attach screenshots of what was broken and how it is fixed now. We will shortly add features that you can contribute to. Please note that we are actively developing based off a internal list and goal, so we may not approve PRs that add features that are already under-development or deviates from our vision.

MIT - see LICENSE.