THE ROAD SO FAR

The Road So Far

Mana's journey so far, one level at a time.

LV 1

First Words

30 May – 19 Jun 2026

Started the project and got a local language model replying through llama.cpp.
Wake-word listening: say her name and she starts paying attention.
Speech is transcribed locally with whisper.cpp, so nothing leaves the machine.
Her first voices, Kokoro and Chatterbox, with replies split into chunks so she starts talking sooner.
A first avatar: a small picture of her in the corner of the screen that reacts while she talks.
Her personality got its first round of tuning.

Abilities unlocked

LV 2

v0.2 · 12 – 27 Jul 2026

A built-in Live2D avatar, in both the launcher and the desktop app.
She waits for a real pause before replying, instead of cutting in mid-sentence.
Multilingual speech, with the language detected automatically, and emoji and kaomoji read out as words.
Self-hosted web access: search, wiki lookups, and reading a page you point her at.
Local vision, so she can describe what’s on the screen.
A first-run setup wizard, automatic updates, and Python bundled into the installer.
Relicensed to Apache 2.0.

Abilities unlocked

LV 3

v0.3 · 3 Aug 2026

Skills: she can propose new ones when she’s idle, or you can create them in a conversation, and nothing is saved until you approve it.
Memory changes wait for your approval too, and she checks for contradictions before remembering something new.
Search across past conversations, by keyword and by meaning.
Deep Research got smarter about spotting gaps in what it found.
She can choose her own Live2D expression, and her lips move with her voice.

Abilities unlocked

LV 4

Sep 2026

A plugin store with two tiers: plugins that add abilities, and add-ons that extend existing ones.
A large refactor of how the pieces fit together, to make the rest of the work easier.
Work began on a native Windows launcher to replace the Electron one, aiming to cut memory use from over 1 GB to about 500 MB.
Folio started: a small HTML engine so Mana can show the pages she writes inside her own window.
The busiest month so far, with over a thousand commits.

Abilities unlocked

NOW

Oct 2026

Streaming speech: she starts talking while the rest of her reply is still being written.
A Doctor panel and tray notifications that warn when something in her setup needs attention.
A memory browser in Settings, to see and manage what she remembers.
Diagrams in the pages she writes.

Abilities unlocked