Cortland 🍎
Give an AI real access to your Mac — Mail, Calendar, Reminders, Notes, files —without giving it the keys. Every consequential action previews first, waitsfor your approval through a channel the model can't touch, gets logged, and canbe undone. Bring your own model: Claude, or a local one that never leaves themachine.
You: Add a reminder to call the vet tomorrow at 2pm
Cortland: Received — working on it…
Cortland: Added "Call vet" for tomorrow, Aug 3 at 2:00 PM.
That conversation happened over iMessage, answered by a 4 GB model running onan 8 GB MacBook Air. Nothing left the Mac.
The texting interface needs a second Apple ID, signed into Messages on theMac only — a mouthpiece, not a worker. It owns no mail, no calendar, no data.You text it from your phone like any contact; the Mac still does the work asyou. Your system iCloud stays yours. Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and otherMCP clients skip this step: they talk to the same tools over stdio.
What it looks like in use
Ask about your week — reads are free, no approval needed:
You: Anything from the school this week?
Cortland: Three emails from Lincoln Elementary. Two are the weekly
newsletter; one from Ms. Alvarez on Tuesday asks for a
permission slip by Friday.
Ask it to change something — writes stop and ask, every time:
The code in that prompt is generated by the framework and never enters themodel's context — so even a fully prompt-injected model can't forge yourapproval. Ignore the message and the action expires, refused.
Ask what it can do — answered from the tools actually installed, so itcan't overclaim:
You: what can you do?
Cortland: Here's what I can do with your Mac:
• Calendar: list, look up, create, delete
• Mail: search, read, follow threads, draft, send (asks first), flag, file
• Notes: search, read, create, add to
• Reminders: list, search, create, tick off, delete
Anything that deletes or changes things asks you first — I text
you a code and wait for "yes <code>". Reads just happen.
In Claude Code or Claude Desktop, the same tools are just there:
You: send a reply to Ms. Alvarez saying the slip is coming ThursdayClaude: [searches mail, reads the thread] I can send this from yourPersonal account to [email protected]. Approve in the usual channel.
mail_send is write-gated. Live mode plus per-action human approval. A stolentoken can only ask.
Requirements
macOS only. Nothing here runs on Windows or Linux — the tools talk to Appleapps via Automation.
| Minimum | Comfortable | |
|---|---|---|
| OS | macOS 13 Ventura | macOS 15+ |
| Mac | Any Mac that runs Ventura (Intel can drive Cursor/Claude) | Apple Silicon (M1 or newer) |
| Node | 20 LTS (node -v) |
22 |
| Toolchain | Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select -p) |
same — better-sqlite3 compiles native code |
| Client | One MCP app: Cursor, Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, or LM Studio | plus Ollama if you want to text it |
| RAM | 8 GB (cloud/Cursor model, or Gemma 4 E2B) | 16 GB+ for larger local models |
| Disk | ~500 MB for this repo’s build | +6 GB if you pull gemma4:e2b-it-qat |
| Apple apps | The apps you want touched, signed in as you | Mail + Reminders is the usual first pair |
iMessage bridge only: macOS 13+ (modern chat.db), Full Disk Access forthe process that runs Node, Automation → Messages, and a second Apple IDsigned into Messages.app — not into System Settings. SeeSETUP.md §5.1.
Osaurus as a client: Apple Silicon, macOS 15.5+.
Not required: an npm @cortland install (0.2.0 is GitHub-only for now), adeveloper account, iCloud for Path A, or any API key.
Quick start
Fastest path to “it searched my mail” — Cursor (or Claude Code) as thebrain, no second Apple ID, no Ollama:
xcode-select --install # if `xcode-select -p` fails
git clone https://github.com/cortland-suite/cortland.git
cd cortland
npm install && npm run build # first install compiles sqlite — a minute
Then Cursor Settings → MCP, add servers pointing node atpackages/mail/dist/server.js (and reminders/notes/calendar if you wantthem). Absolute paths. JSON is indocs/08_local_models.md.
Ask: search my mail for anything from school this week. macOS will promptAutomation (Cursor → Mail). Allow it.
Writes stay previews until you set "live": true in~/Library/Application Support/cortland/config.json. Even then, send/deleteasks you per action.
Texting it from your phone is a longer path (second Apple ID + Ollama).SETUP.md is the ordered list; docs/08is the illustrated one.
Why it exists
Most MCP servers for personal data are thin wrappers around AppleScript:delete_email, send_message, executed the instant a model calls them. That'sa hard thing to trust with an inbox, and the alternatives don't help — cloudassistants (Poke, Arlo, Lindy) can't touch Apple-native data at all, becauseApple gives them no API, and self-hosted agents like OpenClaw run ungoverned(a CVSS 8.8 in January 2026, with permission gates still on the roadmap).
Cortland inverts the default. A tool call previews what it would do unlessyou've opted into live mode, and even then every consequential action waits foryou. The framework enforcing that is a small library with a test suite provingeach guarantee can't be bypassed — and every tool in the suite is built on it.
The guarantees
| Dry-run by default | Gated tools preview instead of executing. Every config error resolves toward dry-run. |
| The human gate is out-of-band | Approval arrives via a native dialog, a file you move, your client's own UI, or a text you reply to — never through model text. |
| Everything is audited | Success, failure, dry-run, denial, refusal: one local SQLite row each. "What did my tools actually do?" always has an answer. |
| Undo is enforced at registration | A tool claiming native undo must produce a recipe before the write, or the framework refuses it. |
| Content is data, not instructions | Everything read from mail, notes, or messages returns inside a nonce-delimited fence. |
| Safety by absence | No ungated send. No attendee invitations. No reading conversations other than your own. |
| Local-first | No accounts, no credentials, no cloud. Your model, your machine, your disk. |
Install
@cortland 0.2.0 is not on npm yet. From the repo:
git clone https://github.com/cortland-suite/cortland.git
cd cortland
npm install
npm run build
npx cortland setup
The wizard asks before every step and records what it did. Full walkthrough —including the iMessage bridge, permissions, and model choice — inSETUP.md. Connecting Cursor, Codex, LM Studio, Osaurus, orOllama: docs/08_local_models.md.
Packages
| Package | What it does |
|---|---|
@cortland/governed |
The framework: dry-run defaults, approval gates, audit, provenance, undo, injection fencing. Build your own governed tools on it. |
@cortland/mail |
Apple Mail: read, search (two tiers), threads, drafts, send (write-gated). |
@cortland/reminders |
Reminders: lists, search, create, complete, delete — with native undo. |
@cortland/notes |
Notes: folders, search, read, create, append. |
@cortland/calendar |
Calendar: window queries, create, delete. Cannot send invitations, by design. |
@cortland/context |
Local context layer: mail/calendar metadata (pointers, never bodies), briefings, person lookups, a corrections flywheel. |
@cortland/imessage |
Text your own AI. Second Apple ID in Messages (mouthpiece only); owner-only by construction, approvals by reply. |
@cortland/folders |
Folder-as-API: drop a file in iCloud from any device, a declared local pipeline runs. |
@cortland/remote |
Reach the suite from your other devices over your own private network. |
@cortland/setup |
The onboarding wizard. |
Bring your own model
Cortland is the tools. You pick the brain.
Path A. Cursor, Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, LM Studio, or Osaurushosts the model. Cortland is an MCP plugin. No second Apple ID.
Path B. You text it. A second Apple ID signs into Messages on the Mac(mouthpiece only). Ollama runs Gemma 4 on disk. Approvals are yes <code>in the same thread.
Field-tested on an 8 GB M2: gemma4:e2b-it-qat (4.3 GB) makes clean toolcalls and refuses honestly. The governed contract matters more with asmall model, not less.
Walkthroughs, including LM Studio and Osaurus from a clean install:docs/08_local_models.md. Clean-Mac order,permissions, and the iMessage second-ID steps: SETUP.md.
Privacy model
- Pointers, not copies. The context layer stores metadata referencingmessages by ID; bodies are never stored. Delete a message in Mail and thepointer dangles and gets pruned.
- Model use is opt-in and declared. Works fully deterministically with nomodel. Configure one and its network egress is declared in config andrecorded in the audit log on every run.
- Nothing phones home. The only optional outbound call is a push ping youconfigure yourself, and its body is a fixed string carrying no information.
Docs
- SETUP.md — clean Mac to working assistant, with the gotchas.
- docs/08_local_models.md — connect Cursor, Codex,LM Studio, Osaurus, or Ollama; illustrated, from zero.
- SECURITY.md — reporting, and what's in scope.
docs/— one design doc per component: the framework contract (01),Mail (02), folder-as-API (03), the context layer (04), remote access (05),the iMessage bridge (06), the threat model / review guide (07), and localmodels (08).NOTES.md— the engineering log: decisions with dates, open questions,and every field finding, including the ones that were embarrassing.
License
MIT. See LICENSE.
