Aladdin

The lamp, literally

In the old story you rub a lamp, ask, and it happens. Aladdin is that interface for AI: a single physical key on your Mac. Press Fn, say what you want — exact text under your cursor, a spoken answer, an agent task — and it is granted. No wake word, no app to open, no chat window to tend.

The lamp earns its place by being trustworthy at the moment of contact. It listens only while you hold it. Dictation writes only into the field you anchored when you pressed; if focus moves, the text waits safely in Result Slip rather than landing in the wrong window. Agent tasks always stop for your review — nothing is sent until you press Send.

One key, two gestures

Tap Fn, tap again

Dictation. Continuous capture with streaming transcription; a faithful polish of your exact words lands at your cursor. Recordings past 5 minutes checkpoint and continue.

Hold Fn, release

Intent. Ask, act, chat, control. Short answers come back as speech in your language; longer results arrive as text. New agent tasks land in Agent Island and run only after you approve them.

Vision

Typing is translation. You already know what you want; the keyboard makes you spell it out. Aladdin's bet is that speech is the native protocol between people and machines — and that it only works if the machine proves itself at every step: capture that verifiably stops, text that lands only where you aimed it, actions that wait for consent.

The goal is a computer you can simply ask. Not an assistant you visit — a lamp that is always within reach.

Install

One command downloads the app, installs it to ~/Applications, asks for your gateway and token, and registers launch-at-login. Fetching with curl also skips the Gatekeeper quarantine that browser downloads trigger.

JavaScript is off — use the manual install below.

The script asks for two things: your team's gateway URL and your personal token — ask your gateway admin if you have neither. The token is read without echo and stored only in ~/.config/aladdin/config.json (mode 0600).

Manual install

1. Unzip Aladdin.app.zip and drag Aladdin.app into Applications. Browser downloads are quarantined and the app is not notarized, so first launch needs right-click → Open, or:

   xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine ~/Applications/Aladdin.app

2. Grant the system permissions it asks for: Microphone, Accessibility, Input Monitoring. Then set System Settings → Keyboard → "Press 🌐 key to" → "Do Nothing", and turn off system Dictation, so two Fn presses never race the OS.
3. Menu bar → Aladdin icon → open the config file, enter your gateway URL and token, and relaunch the app.