Hey Indie Hackers 👋
I’ve been building Collate, a free offline AI workspace for macOS. It lets you summarize, chat with, and deeply explore your PDFs — all without sending data to the cloud.
✨ What’s new
• Share as links — send summaries, highlights, or even a single message with citations.
• Faster summaries — better performance on large PDFs.
• Progress tracking — see how much of the document you’ve covered as you ask questions.
• Suggested questions — get guided prompts to ensure you don’t miss key ideas.
• Mark as done — keep your reading list organized.
• Clickable citations — answers link directly back to the source inside your PDF.
📚 Still here
• Chat with multiple PDFs at once.
• Merge PDFs into a single file.
• Persistent chat history per document.
• Smart citations + auto-highlights in the file.
🌍 Why I’m building this
I believe AI should be private, personal, and unlimited. Running locally means Collate is:
• 🚫 No uploads — your files never leave your device.
• ⚡ Instant — faster than waiting on the cloud.
• ♾️ Unlimited — no usage caps or hidden costs.
Collate is my proof of concept for a bigger vision: building a personal AI workspace where anyone can orchestrate agents and automate their workflows — while keeping control of their data.
💬 I’d love your feedback
• Which formats should I support next (ePub, DOCX, websites)?
• What features would make Collate indispensable for your workflow?
• If you try it, what feels rough or missing?
👉 Try it free here: https://collate.one
👉 We’re live on Product Hunt today — upvotes would mean a lot 🙏
https://www.producthunt.com/products/collate-2?launch=collate-4
Thanks for reading, and for all the inspiration this community provides. Excited to keep building in public!