Install · macOS · Client-side

Configure.
Download.
Run.

Fill the form below. Your selections — including API keys — get baked into a bash script you download. Nothing reaches a server. Seven short steps, ~30 seconds to fill, ~30 seconds to run.

Time
~30 sec.
Surface
Local only.
Touches
3 paths.

01 Sovereignty

Where the work happens.

Pick one below. Cloud is fast and cheap — ZDR open-weight providers in the US/EU. Local is yours, fully — a fine-tuned Qwen on your machine. Whichever you choose is the default; the other side stays available as fallback.

02 Providers

Open-weight, ZDR.

Toggle the providers you want and paste your keys. Cost estimates assume moderate journalism use (~2 morning briefs, ~5 vault-qa, ~2 fact-checks, ~2 newsletter summaries / day).

A Recommended

primary

Open-weight Qwen by Alibaba, hosted in Fireworks US data centers. 1M-token context. ZDR by default — no opt-in needed.

$6/mo $0.50 in · $3.00 out · per 1M tokens
Get API key →
Model details + ZDR docs

Model: accounts/fireworks/models/qwen3p6-plus
Context: 1,000,000 tokens
ZDR ref: docs.fireworks.ai
Heavy use: ~$20-40/mo at 5× baseline

B Alternative

alt

Open-weight, Together US data centers, SOC 2 Type 2. ZDR is opt-in — set both dashboard toggles to "No" before first use.

$9/mo $1.20 in · $1.20 out · per 1M tokens
Get API key →
Model details + ZDR setup

Model: Qwen/Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct-Turbo
Context: 131,072 tokens
Enable ZDR: dashboard → set both privacy toggles to "No" (ToS)
Heavy use: ~$25-50/mo

02 Local model

Mycroft Qwen.

Fine-tuned Qwen 3.5 on investigative methodology — SIFT, OSINT tool selection, evidence grounding, ethics. Abliterated: won't soft-refuse legitimate journalism queries.

9B Default

9B
Daily driver.
local

Runs on 16 GB+ unified memory / RAM. Apple Silicon: native llama.cpp speeds. qwen3.5-9b-abliterated-journalist-GGUF

$0/mo hardware + electricity only

35B Power

35B
Heavy lifting.
training

Needs 64 GB+ unified memory. Training in progress — same flow once released. qwen3.5-35b-abliterated-journalist-GGUF

$0/mo hardware + electricity only
Download + start (after your setup script runs):
# 1. Install the HF CLI
pip install -U "huggingface_hub[cli]"

# 2. Pull the 9B (Q4_K_M is a good balance)
hf download tomvaillant/qwen3.5-9b-abliterated-journalist-GGUF \
  --local-dir ~/.mycroft/models/qwen-journalist-9b \
  --include "*Q4_K_M.gguf"

# 3. Start llama-server
llama-server -m ~/.mycroft/models/qwen-journalist-9b/*.Q4_K_M.gguf -c 32768 --port 8080

03 Required

Three pieces.

All three are required. Leave the auto-install boxes ticked to let the script handle them, or untick and install manually.

01 Runtime

Goose.required

The agent runtime Mycroft plugs into. Desktop or CLI.

Manual download

02 Vault

Obsidian.required

Mycroft reads/writes your knowledge vault through Obsidian's built-in CLI.

Two manual steps after first launch:
  1. Settings → General → Advanced → CLI: ON
  2. Keep Obsidian running for vault recipes

03 Web

Firecrawl.required

Powers every web-capable recipe. The only permitted web-fetch tool in Mycroft.

Get API key →

04 Optional

Plug, or skip.

Tick what you use, skip the rest. Recipes that depend on a missing tool degrade gracefully — they just skip that data source.

Bookmarks

Self-custody sync of X/Twitter bookmarks. Feeds morning-brief. Without it, the recipe skips bookmarks.

Newsletters

Dedicated inbox for newsletter subs. Feeds morning-brief + newsletter-summarize.

Sign up →

Social

Powers apify-social/* recipes — IG, X, FB, TikTok, LinkedIn. Pay-per-run.

Sign up →

05 Plugins

Specialized engines.

Toggle the plugins you want and configure them inline. Each is its own tool — investigation, beat-monitoring, visual production — living in its own repo. The script wires them in.

launching with Mycroft

Spotlight.

OSINT investigation system — multi-phase research, adversarial SIFT fact-checking, evidence grounding, knowledge vault ingestion. Runtime-agnostic (reads AGENTS.md).

buriedsignals/spotlight

Configuration

Data feeds — all optional

browser-use JS-heavy sites, auth forms · MIT, no key
ACLED Conflict event data · battles, civilian violence, protests Register →
Junkipedia Misinformation tracking · 100+ newsrooms Apply →
launching with Mycroft

coJournalist.

Beat-monitoring engine — scheduled scouts watch your sources, detect change, score relevance. Web-hosted (24/7) or self-host.

buriedsignals/cojournalist

Mode

Coming soon · Extension point

Open data

DataHound. May 2026

Government + public-data API discovery and monitoring — turns obscure open-data endpoints into queryable beats. Web-only.

Visuals

Atelier. May 2026

Full visual production — Datawrapper, D3, Maptiler, video, infographics, network graphs, social cards.

+ Extension point

Your plugin.

Any Goose-compatible MCP extension plugs in. 70+ in the registry →

06 Your vault

Where notes live.

Default Obsidian vault path — used by vault-qa and morning-brief.

07 The script

Review.
Then run.

The exact bash that will land in your downloads folder. Your keys are baked in plaintext — review before running. Touches only ~/.mycroft/, ~/.config/goose/, your shell rc.

Show / hide preview
(preview loads on open)
Download. Run. Client-side only — your API keys are embedded in the file, nothing is sent over the network.
Downloaded. To run it:
chmod +x ~/Downloads/mycroft-setup.command
~/Downloads/mycroft-setup.command
Or drag the file onto a Terminal window, or right-click → Open (macOS will ask once; unsigned scripts need explicit consent). After it finishes, open a new terminal so the shell rc updates take effect.