SmartChats

SmartChats is a voice-first AI agent. You talk to it, and it can remember what you said, search the web, write and run code, and draw charts from your data. It reads and writes your data over the Model Context Protocol too, so other tools can use the same data.

The same agent runs two ways:

Cloud: sign up at smartchats.ai. There is no server to run.
Self-hosted: install with one command, then run smartchats setup and smartchats start on your laptop or a VPS. Same app, same agent. Your data stays in a database on your machine. See Quick Start.

Your data can move both ways. smartchats data export and smartchats data import (and the matching MCP tools) copy everything between cloud and local.

Voice logging and recall

The core use is simple. Through the day, talk to SmartChats from your phone or any device. Log thoughts, exercise, ideas, anything, in plain speech. It stores them as logs, metrics, todos and knowledge-graph facts.

Later, ask the built-in agent to recall it. Summarize the week. Find recurring themes. Compare what you logged on Tuesday with what you said on Friday. Draft a journal entry from your raw logs.

If you prefer another tool for the recall side, point Claude (or any MCP client) or the smartchats CLI at your account. It is the same data.

   phone (voice in, all day)
              │
              ▼
       SmartChats stores
       what you said
              │
              └─────────── your data (cloud or local) ─────────┐
                                       │                        │
                                       ▼                        ▼
                              speak to SmartChats'       (optional) Claude
                              agent for recall           or any MCP client

The other direction: bring data in, then talk to it

Any agent that speaks MCP can also write into your account. For example: point a coding agent at a folder of Markdown notes and have it write them into SmartChats as logs, metrics and knowledge-graph facts through the MCP server. Then ask SmartChats about them by voice.

   your existing data              agent reads and structures it
   (Markdown, PDFs, exports)                    │
              │                                 ▼
              ▼                        MCP server writes into
        any agent that                 your SmartChats account
        speaks MCP                              │
                                                ▼
                                       speak with it (SmartChats'
                                       agent or any MCP client)

Who it is for

Notes, decisions and half-formed ideas end up scattered across apps. Speak them to SmartChats as they happen, then ask its agent to recall them. It can pull patterns across weeks, list unfinished threads and connect last month’s logs to this week’s.

SmartChats gives an agent a typed, open data layer:

MCP both ways. Read and write a user’s logs, metrics, todos and knowledge graph from any MCP client.
One contract. The DataAPI interface is the same in the web app, the CLI and the MCP server. Add a query builder once and every consumer can use it.
Public source. The CLI works against any deployment: cloud, local or your own fork.
Code execution. The agent writes and runs JavaScript in a sandbox in the browser, with workspace state that lasts across turns.
Live agent messaging. A coding agent can talk with you through the app with the hub or the MCP bridge.

See Architecture for how the pieces fit.

Log workouts, sleep, mood, water or weight by voice. “20 pull-ups, 30 push-ups, swam 30 minutes” becomes three structured metrics.

Charts on request. Ask for weekly running distance or a month of macros and the chart renders in the chat.
Your own categories. Search is full-text, vector and structured.
Export any time. smartchats data export writes every log, metric and entity to a JSON bundle.

If you build an MCP client, or use one such as Claude Desktop, SmartChats is a data source:

33 tools. Read, search, insert, update and delete logs, metrics, todos and knowledge-graph entries. Vector search on logs, entities and relations. A read-only run_query for raw SurrealQL. Bundle import and export.
Authenticated. The cloud target acts as you. The local target is your single-user install.
Same data layer as the app and the CLI.

See MCP Server for setup and the full tool list.

SmartChats is a working system for studying voice interaction, agent memory and knowledge graphs over time.

Inspectable. The source is public. Fork and change any of it.
Self-hostable. Run the whole stack on your machine.
Testable. The schema is versioned, the layered runner (smartchats-test) covers lint, build, unit, integration and e2e, and data round-trips through export and import.
Measurable voice. The vie voice engine logs the evidence it tunes from, and has a replay harness. See Voice engine.

Get started

Install, run smartchats setup, and have a first conversation.

Quick Start

Environment, API keys, VPS deploys and the Docker alternative.

Self-Hosting

How the app, agent, voice engine, servers and data layer fit.

Architecture

Connect SmartChats to Claude Desktop or any MCP client.

MCP Server

What’s in the stack

The app. A Next.js app in TypeScript that runs in your browser, with desktop and mobile layouts. The agent loop (cortex) streams structured output, runs code in a sandbox and keeps a knowledge graph.
Voice. Speech recognition and voice activity detection in the browser (tivi), and streaming text-to-speech from the server. The vie voice engine is the default turn-taking engine. Before the main model answers, a small server-side turn judge decides whether you have finished speaking. See Voice engine.
Model providers. OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, xAI and Together AI for chat, OpenAI and Azure for speech. Bring your own keys. See Providers.
The local server (smartchats-local-server). Serves the app and the /local-api routes against SurrealDB, including media upload and storage through any S3-compatible bucket such as SeaweedFS. See Local server.
The CLI (smartchats). Sets up, starts and stops the local stack, signs in to the cloud, and imports and exports data. See CLI Reference.
The MCP server (smartchats-mcp). Gives any MCP client your data over stdio. See MCP Server.
The hub and relay (smartchats-hub, smartchats-mcp-bridge). Let coding agents on your machines talk with you through the app. See Hub and Relay.

The source for all of it is in the public repo, under the Apache License 2.0. See Architecture for what is open and what is closed.