Features
Opt-in, local-only capabilities Soil Desktop can offer because it runs on your machine · Verify, Auto-save, Decisions → repo, and Quick access. Off by default, and a toggle only appears when the capability actually works.
Features are the capabilities Soil Desktop can offer because it runs on your machine · things a hosted connector can't do. They all follow the same rules.
How Features work
- Opt-in. Every feature is off by default. Nothing runs, watches, or reads anything until you turn it on.
- Local-only. Features work entirely on this device. They read your own files and handovers locally; nothing about them is uploaded, synced, or written into a handover.
- A toggle appears only when it actually works. If a capability isn't ready on your machine, there's no dead switch for it · the toggle shows up only once the feature can genuinely do its job. No "coming soon" controls.
Grounded on a linked repo
Verify, Auto-save, and Decisions → repo all work against a project repo you link · a local folder on your machine. Linking a repo is a local pointer; Soil reads from it and, only where you explicitly ask, writes one file to it.
Verify
Check that the file and path references a handover mentions actually exist in your linked repo. Grounded or unverified · never a judgment on whether a decision was right.
Auto-save
Watch your linked repo's commits and remind you to run soil save when committed work has piled up. It can't see your AI chat and captures nothing.
Decisions → repo
Write a handover's decisions and context into your repo as a reviewable Markdown record. Soil writes the file and stops · you review and commit.
Quick access
A menu-bar icon and a global shortcut to search saved handovers and copy a soil load command into any AI client. Retrieval only.
Verify
Link a project to a local repo folder, and Verify checks that the file and path references a handover mentions actually exist there. Each reference comes back as one of two things:
- Grounded · the referenced file or path was found in the linked repo.
- Unverified · it wasn't found · maybe it was renamed, moved, or the mention is stale.
Verify checks existence, not correctness
Verify does not judge whether a decision was right or whether the code is good. It only answers one question: does the thing this handover points at still exist in the repo? The honest label is "N grounded · M unverified" · never "claims verified".
Nothing leaves the machine · Verify reads your local files and reports counts in the app. It never uploads your repo, and the result isn't written into a handover.
Auto-save
Auto-save watches your linked repo's commits and reminds you to run
soil save when committed work has piled up since your last save · so your
handovers don't drift behind the code.
A reminder, nothing more
Auto-save cannot see your AI chat, it captures nothing, and it
creates no handovers. It only notices commit activity in the linked repo
and nudges you · the actual soil save is always yours to run, where you
work.
Decisions → repo
Decisions → repo writes a handover's decisions and context into your linked repo as a reviewable Markdown record · so the reasoning behind the work lives alongside the code, in version control.
Soil writes the file and stops
Soil writes the Markdown file and stops there. It never commits and never pushes. You review the file like any other change and commit it yourself · Soil never touches your git history.
Quick access
Quick access adds a menu-bar icon and a global shortcut (⌘⇧S) so you
can reach your saved work from anywhere · without switching to the app window.
Use it to search your saved handovers and copy a soil load command into
any AI client.
Retrieval only
Quick access is retrieval only · it searches and copies a soil load
command onto your clipboard. It doesn't save, doesn't read your clients, and
doesn't send anything anywhere. When the feature is off, no menu-bar icon and
no global shortcut are registered · Soil leaves no footprint until you opt in.
See also
- The Gateway · store your providers and API keys locally and route AI tools through a local-only server, keys never leaving the device.
Connect your AI client
Soil Desktop runs a local stdio MCP server on your machine. Paste one config block into your AI client and soil save / soil load work right where you type.
Gateway
Store your providers and API keys locally, encrypted with the OS keychain, and route AI tools through a local-only server that injects the real key so tools never hold it. Off by default; keys never leave the device and never enter a handover.