Orion — pixel-art dock companion facing forward

Orion

Orbit's assistant for your macOS dock. Click the sprite, ask anything about lifecycle marketing, deliverability, Braze, or retention. Same voice. No fluff. Free.

Download for macOS →View source on GitHub

What it looks like

Approximate render of the popover. Real answers cite the relevant Orbit guides and run in the Orbit voice.

What is it

A small AppKit/SwiftUI app. Orion paces above your Dock, naps when idle, and occasionally pipes up with a CRM/lifecycle observation. Click to open a chat popover — ask anything inside Orbit's lane and you get a grounded answer with citations to the relevant Orbit guides.

Backed by your own model provider — Claude Code CLI, Codex CLI, or your OpenAI API key. The app holds the prompt; you bring the compute. No subscription, no telemetry, no auth.

What Orion gets up to when you're not looking

Orion lives in the Dock. When the Mac is locked, the default apps run quiet politics — Toy Story, but with worse posture. Finder is the eldest, judges messy desktops in silence. Mail thinks every notification is a five-alarm fire; nobody checks in before noon. Safari hoards tabs and is privately worried Arc will replace him. Calendar runs ten minutes late to standing meetings. Reminders is passive-aggressive and we just live with it. Spotlight is fast and forgets why he's in the room the moment he arrives. Terminal is the cool one. Smells of coffee.

Orion mostly naps. The lifecycle work happens when you wake him up.

Install

  1. Download the latest .dmg from GitHub Releases.
  2. Open the .dmg and drag Orion.app into /Applications.
  3. The app is unsigned (no Apple Developer Programme — keeps it free). On first launch macOS will block it. Open Terminal and run:
    xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Orion.app
  4. Launch the app. Orion walks onto your Dock.

Future updates auto-install via Sparkle. The Gatekeeper one-liner shows up again after each update with a one-click "Copy & open Terminal" helper — same command every time.

What it's good for

  • Lifecycle program design — onboarding, win-back, transactional, activation flows.
  • Deliverability — SPF, DKIM, DMARC, BIMI, Apple MPP, Gmail clipping, IP warm-up, list hygiene.
  • Braze specifically — Liquid templating, naming conventions, Canvas patterns.
  • A/B testing discipline — sample size, novelty effects, false positives, holdouts.
  • Attribution and retention economics for lifecycle programs.

Outside its lane (paid acquisition, finance, legal, generic engineering): it'll say so plainly and offer the closest adjacent take it does have.

FAQ

Does it cost anything?

No. The app is free, MIT-licensed, no account required. Your model provider may charge you — that's between you and them. If you want the heavier sibling for Claude Desktop, the Orbit MCPB is also free.

Do I need an API key?

Only if you want to use the OpenAI fallback. If you already have Claude Code CLI or Codex CLI installed, Orion will use those automatically — no key needed.

Is my data sent to Orbit?

No. Conversations route directly to whichever model provider you connect. The app makes no calls to any Orbit server. The GitHub repo has the full source if you want to verify.

Why is it unsigned?

Apple's Developer Programme is $99/year. The Terminal one-liner is a one-time friction in exchange for keeping the app genuinely free. If signing happens later it'll be transparent — no behaviour change.

Windows / Linux?

Not yet. The app is native AppKit/SwiftUI — a Windows port is a separate project, not a port. If there's demand we'll reconsider.

Source, issue tracker, and changelog all live on GitHub. Found a bug or want to suggest a guide topic? Open an issue.

The Orbit MCPB extension for Claude Desktop is the heavier cousin — same voice, more depth, native Braze integration. Free with an account. Get Orbit for Claude →