EMMA
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Getting her running, your first hour, controlling what she remembers, and fixing what goes wrong. If none of this covers it, email me — I read everything.

Looking for everything she can do — every dial, panel and setting? That's the user manual. This page is the short one, for getting started and getting unstuck.

Installing her

1. Install Ollama first

Ollama is the free engine EMMA thinks with. It's a separate install and it's the one step people miss. If you skip it, EMMA's first-run setup will notice, hand you the right installer for your system, and carry on by itself the moment it's running.

2. Install EMMA

Get the latest build from Releases.

3. Your computer will warn you — here's why

The builds aren't code-signed yet, so:

Windows: "Windows protected your PC" → More info → Run anyway
macOS: "cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified" → right-click the app → Open

That warning means "unsigned", not "unsafe" — but you're right to be suspicious of it. Every release publishes SHA-256 hashes so you can check the file you downloaded is the file that was built.

4. First run picks a model for your machine

She looks at your RAM and GPU and suggests a model that will actually run well, rather than the biggest one. You can change it later — the model name in the top bar is a picker, and it warns you honestly when a model is too big for your hardware.

Your first hour

Three things show you what she actually is. Everything else can wait.

  1. Tell her something about yourself — then quit and come back tomorrow. Anything: what you do, what you're building, your dog's name. Close her completely, open her the next day, ask about it. That's the whole product in one move.
  2. Ask her to do something on your actual machine. "What's taking up space on my disk?" She'll ask before anything destructive, and every action is written to a log you can read.
  3. Turn on Dream Mode before bed. Overnight she goes back over the day, makes connections, and leaves a short briefing for the morning.

She is as smart as your hardware lets her be. That's the honest trade for privacy. On a good GPU she's genuinely capable; on an old laptop she'll be slower and less sharp than a cloud assistant. Better you know now.

The safety dial — what she may do without asking

EMMA can act on your computer: read files, run commands, use a browser. The dial in the top bar decides how much of that happens without your say-so.

Two things sit above the dial and apply even on Full: protected paths (your SSH keys, GPG, cloud credentials — she is refused regardless of setting, and you can add your own in Permissions), and the audit log, which records everything she does in a tamper-evident chain you can read line by line under Her world → Activity.

There's also a Stop button while she's working, and undo for file changes she made.

Memory: seeing it, forgetting it, taking it with you

Everything she knows is in the memory panel in the top bar. It's not a black box — you can read it, edit it and delete it.

Your export always works — during the trial, after it expires, whatever happens. Your memory is never held hostage to a payment.

If you want her memory encrypted at rest, turn it on in the privacy panel — AES-256, with the key in your operating system's keychain.

When something's wrong

On Linux she opened in my browser, not in her own app window

That's expected, not a fault. On Windows and macOS EMMA opens as an ordinary application window; on Linux the native window needs a system library that isn't in the installer yet, so she uses a browser window instead. If you have Chrome, Chromium, Brave or Edge she gets a separate frameless window of her own — no tabs, no address bar, its own taskbar icon, and a private profile that never touches your browsing session. Otherwise she opens as a tab in your default browser.

She is still running entirely on your machine, nothing is going over the internet, and every feature works normally. One difference worth knowing: closing that window does not stop her — on Linux she keeps running in the background, which is what lets her dream overnight. To stop her, either systemctl --user stop emma.service if you installed the background service, or quit the emma process from your system monitor. It's a known gap and it's on the roadmap.

She says Ollama isn't running

Ollama isn't installed, or isn't started. Install it from ollama.com; on Windows and macOS it starts itself after installing. On Linux the installer sets up a service, or run ollama serve. EMMA rechecks every couple of seconds and continues on her own once it's up — you don't need to restart her.

She's very slow, or the answers are poor

Almost always the model is too big for the machine. Open the model picker in the top bar — anything marked as a poor fit for your hardware will say so. A smaller model that runs fast usually feels far better than a large one that crawls. A first reply is also slower than the rest, because the model has to load into memory.

She won't act on my machine any more

Two likely reasons. The safety dial may be on Lock — check the top bar. Or your trial has ended: she stays as a read-only companion, still talking, with export still working, but she won't touch your machine until there's a licence. Nothing is deleted, and everything comes back when you buy.

She can't see a file, or refuses to touch one

Protected paths (credentials and key stores) are refused on purpose, at every dial setting. Everything else: check Her world → Permissions.

The window opened in my browser instead of its own window

She falls back to your browser when her own window can't start. She works exactly the same either way — it's cosmetic. Worth telling me if it happens, with your OS.

She stopped mid-answer, or said her model refused

Usually Ollama restarting, or a model that was removed or swapped. She retries and then says so in words rather than hanging. Check the model picker still shows something installed.

Something just felt awkward

Type /papercut followed by what annoyed you. It logs instantly — no model call, nothing sent anywhere. Later, type /papercuts to see them all with a Copy all button, bundled with your OS, hardware and model version. Paste that into an email to me.

Small annoyances are the most useful thing you can send. Big bugs I'll find myself. It's the "this felt off and I can't say why" ones I can't see from in here.

Trial, buying, refunds

60 days, everything unlocked. When it ends she becomes a read-only companion — still talking, export still working, nothing deleted. If you buy six months later, everything she remembered is still there.

Buying is open — £149 once, yours forever, from the pricing section. Your key arrives by email straight after checkout; if it hasn't turned up in a few minutes, check spam and then email me and I'll resend it by hand.

14-day no-questions refund, and your licence is checked on your own machine with no server involved. Full terms in plain English: the licence.