About sideBar

Why I built sideBar

I got tired of copying things in and out of ChatGPT and Claude. Attaching files. Explaining the same context again and again. Jumping between notes apps, task managers, read-it-later tools, and AI chat windows, trying to stitch everything together into something that actually felt useful.

The models kept improving. The product experience around them often still felt wrong.

The thing that made it click was Claude Code. You spin it up inside a folder and it can immediately work with the files around it. That sounds simple, but it changes the feeling completely: the AI starts in the right environment and can do something useful with what is already there. I kept thinking: why doesn't personal AI work more like this?

So I started building sideBar. I began with a read-it-later service, because that was what I reached for most. Then I added notes, then tasks. Over time, I found I was no longer opening the separate apps I had used for those things. That was the moment it stopped feeling like a side project.

What makes sideBar different

Most AI assistants sit inside a blank chat interface and know nothing about you until you tell them. sideBar is different because it was built the other way around: your content lives alongside your assistant, so it has real context to work with from the start.

sideBar also knows what it can do and how it works, which sounds obvious but is rarer than it should be. It can guide you through its own capabilities, rather than leaving you to figure it out.

And it has its own identity: a name, a tone of voice, a set of values. Not a generic AI shell. An assistant that is designed to feel like it is on your side.

How sideBar works

sideBar works with Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google. You bring your own API key and pay those providers directly for the AI usage you generate. You are never locked into a single model or company.

The Skills Store lets you extend sideBar with additional capabilities: transcribing audio and video, connecting to third-party services, and more. Skills run automatically during conversations when they are relevant, so you get the benefit without having to think about it.