A control panel for the AI CLI zoo on your machine

What it does

AI Manager is a local-first Tauri 2 desktop app (Rust backend, React renderer) that manages AI coding tools — Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, and seven others — plus detection of desktop apps like Cursor and Claude Desktop. It handles installs, updates, repairs, API endpoint wiring, MCP servers, skills, global prompts, and session browsing, all without touching your PATH or shell profile. It’s a fork of CC Switch, with the inherited code kept in place so upstream fixes can still be cherry-picked.

The interesting bit

The design philosophy is unusually honest for this space: Quick Check only reports health from real local signals, endpoint testing sends one actual request to a model you pick (so a dead key no longer looks like a healthy address), and it never rewrites live configuration when adopting a tool’s existing MCP servers. Per-tool behaviour comes from a capability registry, so a tool lacking a concept simply doesn’t show that control.

Key highlights

• Manages ten CLI tools across npm, pnpm, bun, and Volta without fighting the package manager that already owns them
• Shows the effective endpoint a tool will really use, including environment variable overrides
• No analytics or telemetry; logs are size-bounded and redact known secret forms
• Fail-closed signed updater: minisign signature verified against an embedded public key before anything installs
• Signed and notarized macOS builds; checksums published for Windows and Linux

Caveats

• Provider credentials are stored in plaintext in the local database and backups — an OS secret store is planned but not implemented
• Windows installers aren’t Authenticode-signed, so SmartScreen will warn; the published SHA-256 is your integrity evidence
• Linux ARM, Windows ARM, rpm, and universal macOS builds are out of scope for now

Verdict

If you juggle multiple AI coding CLIs and their config files, this replaces a pile of shell fiddling with one calm interface. If you use exactly one tool and it works, it’s a solution to a problem you don’t have.