AI Manager is a desktop app that installs, updates and configures ten AI coding CLIs on one screen

Running more than one AI coding command-line tool on the same machine turns into a job about npm ownership, PATH order, environment variables and hand-edited config files, none of which is the reason a developer installed the tool.

AI Manager, a Tauri 2 desktop app released this month by the OnlistTeam GitHub organisation, puts ten of those tools behind one screen. The MIT-derived project is licensed under the GNU AGPL-3.0-or-later, was created on 21 September 2026 and has 333 stars six days later. Installers are signed and notarised on macOS, unsigned on Windows and Linux with a published SHA-256 and a minisign signature verified by the in-app updater.

What it manages

The tools list in the README covers Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Gemini CLI, Grok Build, OpenClaw, Hermes, Pi, Kimi Code and DeepSeek Harness on the command line, and Codex App, Claude Desktop, Cursor, ZCode and Cherry Studio as separate desktop apps. The README says AI Manager detects, installs, updates and repairs the command-line tools without crossing away from the npm, pnpm, bun or Volta owner that already manages them, and shows a verified version history plus bounded, redacted process logs rather than raw shell output. Desktop apps are detected but updated through each vendor's own signed channel.

What the seven screens do

The sidebar carries seven destinations plus Settings in the footer. Home shows what is installed, what has an update and what needs attention, and rechecks saved service addresses only when the user asks. Software runs the install, update and repair path for the command-line tools. API Endpoints connects a tool to an AI service from a reviewed preset catalogue or a custom HTTPS endpoint, then shows the effective connection: the endpoint the tool will really use, and why, including environment variable overrides.

The remaining screens cover the parts that usually live in dot-files. Skills scans every supported local scope in one overview, installs from trusted GitHub catalogues or a local ZIP, copies a Skill to another tool, and keeps recovery copies before removal. MCP adds stdio, HTTP and SSE connections without pasting JSON, and enables or disables them per tool. Global Prompts creates, edits, imports and switches prompts. Sessions browses and searches local sessions and can resume supported ones in a terminal. Settings holds language, appearance, the local download proxy, database backups, and a fail-closed signed updater.

Where it came from, and the sensitive part

AI Manager started as a fork of CC Switch by Jason Young, released in 2025 under MIT, and everything the OnlistTeam added sits beside the inherited code so upstream fixes stay cherry-pickable. The privacy section is worth reading before installing: the app carries no analytics, but the README says provider credentials are still stored in plaintext inside the local database, backups and SQL configuration exports, and that an OS secret-store and encrypted export are planned but not implemented. Treat those files as sensitive until they are.

The one screen and one config store trade the ambient state of ten separate tools for one place that must not be lost or leaked. That is the same shape as any password manager, and the same rules apply: keep the app updated, keep the database backup somewhere you would keep an SSH key, and reset a leaked API key rather than assume the file has stayed on the machine.

Source

Primary source: OnlistTeam/ai-manager on GitHub. Project homepage with installers: aimanager.tools.