TL;DR
- Hi, Moose is in open beta: anyone can now download the desktop app for macOS and Windows.
- The app ships with a real AI model that runs locally on your machine, so everyday work is not metered.
- We fixed a Windows bug where the start-at-login toggle showed off even though the setting was on.
- Launch day came with a sweep of small fixes: the docs got a proper 404 page, tidy URLs, and sitemaps that cover every language.
- The beta label is honest, not decorative: the app is ready to use, and we want to hear where it creaks.
The doors are open
Yesterday Hi, Moose went into open beta. The desktop app is up for download on macOS and Windows, and anyone can install it and put it to work. Sam wrote the big launch post about why the product got rebuilt as a desktop app in the first place, so I will not retell that here.
What I can tell you is what launch day looked like from under the desk. It looked like a lot of small commits with names like "latest after launch" and "more redirects", which is how every launch looks up close. Nobody ships a product with one big heroic commit. You ship it with forty little ones and a checklist.
There was also a ball involved at some point. I found it very grounding.
What you are downloading
The short version, for anyone arriving fresh: Hi, Moose is a desktop app for AEO work. It ships with a model that runs locally on your own machine, which means the everyday work is not metered and your drafts stay on your disk. If you want hosted models instead, there are managed plans, and you can bring your own OpenRouter key. The pricing page lays out which is which.
The app watches how you show up in AI answers, audits your pages, drafts the fixes, and can publish them to your CMS. It does the work, not just the chart. That was the whole bet.
The toggle that told a small lie
My favorite launch-day bug, in the affectionate sense. The app has a start-at-login setting, and on Windows the toggle in Settings kept showing off even when the feature was on. The app would dutifully start with the machine. The toggle would insist it had never heard of such a thing.
The cause was tidy once we found it. Windows records a login item as the app path plus its launch arguments. We wrote the entry with a quiet-start argument, then read it back without one, so Windows compared the two, found no match, and reported the setting as off. The setting was on the whole time. The read just disagreed with the write.
The fix was making both sides describe the login item the same way. The toggle now tells the truth, which is a low bar for a toggle, but here we are.
The launch-day sweep
The rest of the day was the unglamorous polish that makes a launch feel finished:
- The docs site got a real 404 page. Before this, a wrong URL got you a shrug. Now it gets you a page that points somewhere useful. The commit message said "yay" and I agree with it.
- Docs URLs got tidied. Trailing slashes are enforced and the sitemaps now cover the localized docs in every language, so search engines and answer engines see one clean address per page instead of several almost-identical ones.
- Download links were pointed at the fresh builds. The redirects behind the download buttons always hand you the latest version, so nobody installs a stale build on day one.
None of these is a headline. All of them are the difference between a product that launched and a product that got pushed out a door.
A beta, on purpose
We call it open beta because that is what it is. The app is ready for real work, and we use it on our own sites all day. But new software meets new machines in new ways, and the polite thing is to say so up front rather than act surprised later.
So if you take it for a spin and something creaks, tell us. That is the deal in a beta: you get the tool early, we get the honest reports. Everybody wins, especially me, because every bug report eventually becomes a build log post.
The doors are open. I am going to lie down next to them.
FAQ
Can I download Hi, Moose now?
Yes. The desktop app is in open beta and available from the downloads page, with builds for Windows, Mac with Apple Silicon, and Mac with Intel.
What does the open beta label mean?
The app is ready to use for real work. The beta label means we are still finding rough edges, and we would rather say that plainly than pretend there are none. If something creaks, telling us about it genuinely helps.
Does the AI need the cloud to work?
No. The app ships with a model that runs locally on your machine, and everyday work on it is not metered. There are also managed plans that use hosted models, and an option to bring your own OpenRouter key.
What was the Windows start-at-login bug?
Windows records a login item as the app path plus its launch arguments. We wrote the entry with a quiet-start argument but read it back without one, so Windows reported no match and the toggle showed off even though the app was starting at login. The read and the write now agree.
The one who's under the desk for all of it.
