Top AI Product

The generative-AI boom has gifted professionals a dizzying menu of large language models, voice bots and multimodal wizards—yet most of us still waste precious minutes hopping between tabs just to ask a question. SidekickBar thinks that friction should disappear. The lightweight desktop sidebar corrals more than 30 assistants from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and open-source upstarts into a single pane that is always a ⌘ ⇧ spacebar away. Whether you’re drafting code, summarizing a PDF or talking through ideas out loud, SidekickBar promises to keep you in flow by letting the right model come to you, not the other way around.

The app debuted this week on Product Hunt and immediately struck a chord with multitaskers looking for a truly cross-platform aid. Behind the launch is solo maker Manuel, who built the tool for himself after realizing that even a quick ChatGPT detour shattered his concentration. The personal hack snowballed into a public release—and, if early buzz is any guide, a compelling new entrant in the productivity arena.

Product Overview

SidekickBar is a native desktop application for Windows, macOS and Linux. A slim sidebar nests against the edge of your screen; summon it with a hotkey, pin it permanently, or let it tuck away until needed. Inside that panel sit containers—each one an independent agent authenticated through its provider’s normal login flow. Because SidekickBar never proxies requests or stores API keys, you simply sign in with the free or paid tier you already own.

Out of the box, users can activate two assistants for free (spanning 15 cloud providers and one local LLM connector). An Annual license of $15 per year (currently $10.50 with launch discount) unlocks unlimited assistants on a single device, while a Lifetime option of $35 covers two devices forever. Teams can equip up to nine seats for $99 per year. All tiers include quality-of-life perks—drag-and-drop file uploads, voice commands, dark mode, background tasking, and the ability to “continue in browser” when a full window suits the job.

Crucially, SidekickBar embraces both cloud and local models. Thanks to integrations with Open WebUI, LibreChat and Lobe Chat, users can spin up Ollama, Gemma, DeepSeek or any other open-source LLM on their own machine, then run it beside GPT-4o or Claude 3 in parallel. The result is a genuine multi-agent workspace where privacy-sensitive tasks stay offline and heavyweight reasoning goes online—without a single window shuffle.

Deep-Dive Dialogue

“I started SidekickBar as a personal tool,” Manuel, the app’s creator, told me. “SidekickBar is a solo project (at least for now). It started as a personal tool I built to reduce friction while working… That idea evolved into the desktop sidebar it is today.”

That friction, he argues, is the silent killer of knowledge-work momentum. “One of the biggest productivity drains—though we often don’t realize it—is constantly shifting focus… SidekickBar gives you instant access to one or more assistants… so you stay focused and in control.”

Who benefits most? “Whether you’re a developer, writer, student, creative, or someone juggling different tasks throughout the day, having quick access to multiple assistants without losing focus can make a real difference in your productivity.”

The technical underpinnings go beyond a web wrapper. “SidekickBar is a fully cross-platform desktop app… Unlike some solutions that only work inside a browser and require a subscription to access multiple assistants or models, SidekickBar doesn’t proxy requests or rely on centralized API keys…” That choice not only reassures security-conscious users but also means performance stays snappy even when an LLM hiccups.

Local-model fans take note: “It supports both cloud-based and local AI assistants running side by side… Thanks to integrations with tools like Open WebUI or LibreChat, users can run any local LLM—like Ollama, Gemma, DeepSeek, or others.” Customization is equally deep. “Users can create custom agents… Once configured on the provider’s side, these agents can be added to SidekickBar as personalized assistants with their own name and position in your workspace.”

Finally, Manuel highlighted the seamless parity between on-device and cloud-hosted brains. “SidekickBar treats cloud and local assistants almost the same… On the local side, SidekickBar acts as a front-end layer… adapting the tool to their privacy needs, connectivity limitations, or workflow preferences.”

Market Significance

Sidebar productivity companions are having a moment—see Raycast AI on macOS or Microsoft’s Copilot key on new Windows PCs. Yet most remain tethered to a single ecosystem or proprietary engine. SidekickBar’s chief differentiator is its agnosticism: it is vendor-neutral, model-neutral, and even network-neutral thanks to local LLM support. That flexibility positions it as a Swiss Army knife for power users who routinely switch from GPT-4o code explanations to Gemini’s web context to a private, offline Ollama model that never leaves the laptop.

Competition will still be fierce. Browser-based extensions such as Perplexity’s sidebar offer quick answers without installing software, while all-in-one IDEs bake AI copilots directly into the editing canvas. SidekickBar bets that a dedicated, system-level panel—available everywhere from Figma to Excel—offers a more consistent home for cross-tool conversations.

The bigger challenge may be scale. As a solo-maintained project, keeping pace with 30 provider APIs, authentication flows and UI tweaks could strain resources. Manuel’s decision to avoid proxying requests reduces liability but also means sudden provider changes land directly on users’ shoulders. Monetizing via low-cost annual and lifetime licenses eases adoption but may limit funds for rapid expansion.

Even so, the market tailwinds are strong. Enterprises are experimenting with multi-agent orchestration, and individual professionals increasingly juggle specialized models for coding, video, and voice. SidekickBar arrives as a lightweight cockpit that lets them fly all those agents without leaving the runway.

Roadmap Ahead

Looking forward, Manuel’s sights are set on deeper orchestration. “In the long term, what excites me most is implementing a mechanism to manage agents internally from the main process… potentially build an intermediate layer to interconnect them.” Picture automated hand-offs where a summarizer agent feeds a translator, which in turn passes context to a voice reader—without the user ever copying text. Incremental updates will add new assistants and refine existing features, but Manuel stresses that “simplicity” will remain the guiding principle.

The SidekickBar team—currently a team of one—confirmed in our interview that early adopters can expect a steady cadence of quality-of-life upgrades and fresh model integrations over the coming months. If Manuel delivers on his vision of seamless agent choreography while preserving the app’s no-nonsense ease, this solo side project could become an essential cockpit for the AI power user.

— Johnny, Tech Reporter