Your AI chief of staff. Built on memory you own.
Open source and running on your Mac, Dex turns meetings, messages and goals into memory your AI can actually use. The more you use it, the better it knows who matters, what changed and where every follow-up belongs.
You're drowning in context.
Meetings pile up. People blur together. Tasks scatter across a dozen apps. By the time you find what you need, the moment has passed. You understand what AI can do, but every tool is either too simple to be useful or too technical to set up.
Not another chatbot. A system that compounds.
A chat assistant starts every conversation from zero and remembers a handful of preferences. Dex turns every interaction into structured, connected knowledge your AI can use, so context compounds from the first week.
- Remembers a few preferences. Forgets the rest.
- Memory is a black box you cannot search, export or build on.
- Context dies when the conversation ends.
- Your knowledge lives on someone else's servers.
- Builds structured knowledge: people, projects, meetings and goals, all connected.
- Everything is searchable Markdown you own and control.
- Every interaction enriches a system that persists, and gets richer every week.
- Your data stays on your machine. Period.
It's open source. And people didn't stay quiet.
Dex started as a terminal tool I built for myself, then open-sourced. It runs in your terminal: no dashboards to learn, you just ask. Hundreds of people picked it up, and something rare happened. They didn't just star it. They told their networks.
Talk to it like a chief of staff.
One line, plain English. Dex reads your goals, your calendar and your channels, shows its working, then hands you something you can act on. No dashboards, no setup. Scroll through what people ask it every day.
I always wanted to bring this to people who don't live in a terminal.
The open-source core is powerful, but it asks you to be comfortable in a terminal. Most people aren't, and they deserve this too. So I'm building Dex into a native desktop app: the same brain, in a calm, clickable surface. Here is a glimpse. It's in private beta now.
Describe a routine once. Dex runs it forever.
Tell it in plain English what to watch for and what to draft. Dex runs it on schedule and leaves the result in your tray, so the work happens whether you remember it or not.
Plain English · on a schedule
Your day, decided before you open your inbox.
Overnight, Dex reads your goals, calendar and channels, then writes the one brief that says what matters today, who needs you, and what will slip if you don't move.
Catch the relationship going quiet before it costs you.
Dex watches every key relationship and flags the champion, client or board member who has slipped, with the check-in already drafted.
Before it costs you
The handful of things that actually need you. Nothing else.
Dex triages every channel, message and signal into one short list of what is yours to decide, and quietly handles the rest.
Your replies, written. You just hit send.
Dex drafts the follow-ups in context, each with the goal it serves, and waits in your tray. Nothing sends without your click.
Nothing sends without you
Every commitment, measured against what you said matters.
Your week, quarter and year in one ladder. When a meeting maps to none of them, Dex says so, and asks if you should really take it.
Last week, scored against what you set out to do.
Dex marks every priority done, partial or slipped with the evidence behind each, names what carries into next week, and ends with one question worth sitting with.
Ask it anything. It answers from everything you know.
A conversation grounded in your vault: the renewal, the person, the history. Not a generic chatbot.
The truth about your week, not the story you tell yourself.
Dex compares the week you planned against the week you actually had, per priority, and ends with one honest question.
From reactive to in control.
Here is what a typical day actually looks like.
Morning plan
One command, five minutes: an overnight intel summary, meeting prep for everyone you're seeing today, and exactly three focus items. Heavy meeting day? It sees that and adjusts.
Proactive support
It scans recent conversations and surfaces where you can add value. A customer mentioned a gap? Dex drafts a message offering your help, before you're even asked.
After a call
Meeting ends. Transcript captured. Person pages updated. Follow-ups extracted, a dependency flagged for the product team, a reply drafted with full context. Nothing slips.
Weekly synthesis
Themes across your week, patterns from your conversations, and the wins filed silently all week, surfaced. "I noticed three improvements we should make. Want me to build them?"
"If Dex disappeared tomorrow, you would lose an assistant, not your memory."
Hundreds of tools can feed your memory.
Dex uses a Nango-powered connection directory: hundreds of provider APIs indexed, with your real local connections verified before they appear. Add the tools you use, and Dex routes context to the right person, company or project.
Dave Killeen
Field CPO, EMEA at Pendo · Host of The Vibe PM Podcast
After 8 months of building a personal operating system with Claude Code, I open-sourced the whole thing. Not for content or AI hype, but as a practical solution for a role with more moving pieces than anyone can track alone.
Too many relationships to track. Too many deals to monitor. Too many commitments that slip. Dex was built because it was needed: a chief of staff that handles the cognitive overhead so you can focus on the conversations and decisions that actually matter.
25+ years of product leadership across BBC, MailOnline, Badoo/Bumble, and now Pendo.
"The best part? You don't need to be an engineer. The system adapts to your role. Answer one question and it scaffolds everything for you."
Learn AI by doing, not by reading docs.
How to Build Personal Knowledge & Operating Systems with AI
The Next Level of Vibe Coding is with Parallel Agents
The AI Resume Builder Using Burger Prompts
Go From a Good PM to a Great PM with Better Prompts
Context Pulling: The PM Productivity Hack
Create Presentations That Wow: The 2-Step AI Workflow
Gain 9+ Hours/Week: 5 Levels of AI Speech-to-Text
Follow the build. Get invited when there’s room.
The desktop app is in a small private beta, with mobile on the way. I’ll send practical build updates and beta invites as new places open up.