ixi local

ixi Local is ixi as an app on your Mac. It opens straight onto your dashboard, with no sign-in and no account. Your canvases, files and keys stay in one folder on this machine. Models and pixies run on provider accounts you connect yourself.

You build the same way you do in the browser: canvases, model nodes, pixies, 3D models, sandboxes and PDF files. The difference is who it's for. ixi Local has one person and nothing to share with, so the features that involve other people or money live in ixi Cloud.

how it fits

	ixi Local	ixi Cloud
sign-in	none: you are You, in an organization named This Mac	your ixi account
where projects live	a folder on this Mac	ixi's servers
what a run costs	nothing in ixi; your provider bills you for your own key	ixi credits
who can see a canvas	only you	you choose: private, organization, public, named people

• To connect your own providers, see keys, connectors and models.
• To change the app itself with your own coding agent, see customize ixi.

what lives in ixi Cloud

These keep their place in ixi Local, most of them marked with a Cloud badge. Open one and you see "feature — available in ixi Cloud" in place of the feature, with a link to ixi Cloud.

where	what you see
canvas menu → Share…	Sharing — available in ixi Cloud: "Sharing needs an ixi Cloud account. Projects on this machine stay private to you." There are no visibility choices and no people to add. Upload to ixi Cloud to share sends a copy to ixi Cloud; see ixi cloud from the app.
dashboard tabs	Public library and Shared with me carry the badge
organization tabs	Members, Billing, Usage and API keys carry the badge
organization General tab	Pixie email addresses: there's no workspace slug, and pixies get no mailbox
organization switcher	New organization is greyed out

The user menu has Settings in place of Sign out: there's no account to sign out of.

what works with the network off

ixi Local needs no connection of its own. With the network off, the dashboard and your canvases open and keep every node, 3D models evaluate, sandbox frames render, and PDF files open.

Some things still need the internet because the work happens somewhere else:

• a model or a pixie on a hosted provider (Replicate, fal, Anthropic and the rest) reaches that provider;
• sandbox code that imports a package from the web fetches it.

Models on a server on your own Mac, such as Ollama, keep working offline through a connector. See connectors.

where your things live

what	where
projects, files, your model list, your saved keys	~/Library/Application Support/ixi
copies taken before an update	the backups folder inside it (the three newest are kept)
the key that opens your saved keys	your login Keychain, as ixi Safe Storage
ixi's own source and your workspaces, if you use customize ixi	~/ixi
the folders terminal pixies run in	~/ixi/pixies

Saved keys are sealed, and nothing in the app can show one again. More in keys.

good to know

• The top bar is the window's title bar. Drag any empty part of it to move the window. The ← and → next to the window buttons go back and forward, like a browser's.
• Runs have no limits from ixi. There are no credits, no daily run limit and no storage cap. Your provider's own limits and prices still apply.
• Close the window, and ixi quits. Closing the last window or pressing <kbd>⌘</kbd> <kbd>Q</kbd> stops everything ixi started, then exits. It waits up to 8 seconds for a clean stop. Your canvases come back exactly as you left them.
• ixi runs once. Open it while it's already running and the open window comes to the front. Two copies on one folder would damage it.
• Updates back up first. When a new version changes how projects are stored, ixi copies your folder to backups before it changes anything. If a step fails, ixi stops with ixi could not start instead of opening half-updated projects.
• One person, one organization. You can rename This Mac on the organization General tab. There are no admin pages.

where next

• keys, connectors and models: connect Replicate, fal, an LLM, or a model server of your own.
• customize ixi: change ixi itself with Claude Code, Codex or another coding agent.
• terminal pixies, ixi cloud from the app, builds and safe mode and github: pixies on your own Claude Code, uploads to ixi Cloud, running your own build of ixi, and sending your changes back.
• quick start: your first canvas. It works the same here once a model provider key is set.