cs.AI
cs.AI (chopsticksAI) is a free AI assistant developed by Chopsticks HQ. It provides a native macOS application with a Cursor-style Agents window, a built-in Chromium browser rail, and live chat without requiring users to supply an OpenRouter or OpenAI API key. The same assistant is available as a web app and an optional terminal CLI named csai for scripting and headless queries. The tool uses a two-model collaboration: NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra (550B, 55B active) writes initial drafts, and Google Gemma 4 26B (26B, 4B active) reviews and tightens responses. Answers are grounded by a Chromium web search and a curated knowledge base of 60 topics expanded to 2,285 matchable terms, with word-boundary matching to avoid hallucinated version numbers. Generated files and code skip the review pass to prevent silent rewriting. Account features include email sign-in, usage tracking, credit tiers, and Fathom Pro key redemption. cs.AI is open source under MIT and can be installed via a one-line curl script; no Xcode is required. The free allowance resets every five hours, with context limits of 48K by default and paid tiers up to 128K. The system uses server-side API credentials held by Chopsticks HQ, eliminating client-side key management.
- Category
- Ai Chatbots
- Pricing
- Unknown
Problem solved
Eliminates API key friction for Mac users exploring AI tools by providing a free, cross-interface (macOS, web, terminal) AI assistant with web search grounding, coding agents, and offline knowledge base fallback, without requiring users to manage API keys.
Use cases
- General AI chat and question answering on macOS
- Coding assistance via Cursor-style Agents window and StickerCoder+
- Terminal-based AI queries and automation with csai CLI
- Web research with built-in Chromium search grounding
- Offline access to product knowledge base when network is unavailable
- Account-synced chat across devices
Audience
- Developers
- ML Engineers
- Data Scientists
- Hobbyists
- Researchers
Pros
- Free with no API key required from user
- MIT open source
- Native macOS app plus web and terminal interfaces
- Grounds answers with live Chromium search and curated knowledge base
- Includes Cursor-style Agents window and coding tools
Cons
- Native desktop app only for macOS (Windows/Linux users rely on web/CLI)
- Free tier has usage and context limits (48K context, reset every 5 hours)
- Requires Chopsticks HQ server endpoint for model inference (not fully local)
- No vector embeddings retrieval, relying on keyword knowledge base
- Email sign-in needed for account sync and credit features
Official website: https://chopstickshq.com/chopsticks-ai
Canonical LambdaBase page: https://www.lambdabase.com/tools/cs-ai