Everything about the shelf.

Install

Krovi is a single small Windows app. There is nothing to sign into and nothing to configure before it’s useful.

1. Open the download page (or GitHub Releases) and pick the x64-setup.exe installer. The .msi is there for managed deployments.
2. Optional but recommended: check the file against the SHA-256 shown next to it on GitHub.
   PowerShellCopy

   Get-FileHash .\Krovi_*_x64-setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256

3. Run the installer. Windows SmartScreen may say “Windows protected your PC” because Krovi isn’t code-signed yet. Choose More info → Run anyway once you’ve verified the checksum.

Requirements: Windows 11, 64-bit. Krovi has only been tested on Windows 11; Windows 10 is untested and may or may not work. Roughly the size of a photo to download; no account, no licence key.

First run

Krovi starts as a small pill at the top centre of your primary monitor and puts an icon in the tray. Click the pill, or press Ctrl + Alt + Space from anywhere, and it springs open into the panel.

Find your way around

• Left rail: one icon per tool. Switch tools with a click.
• Header: the current tool, the date and time, and the close and quit controls.
• Content: the Home overview or a focused tool.
• Stats strip: live memory and disk usage along the bottom.

Fold it away

Press Esc, click anywhere else, press the hotkey again, or use the panel’s close button. It morphs back into the pill and stays out of the way.

How it behaves

• The pill never blocks your clicks. The invisible area around it passes clicks through to the app underneath; only the visible pill or panel is clickable.
• It hides during fullscreen. Games, video and presentations that cover the whole monitor hide the pill until they end (optional).
• One instance. Launching Krovi again expands the existing panel instead of opening a second window.
• Always reachable. The tray icon toggles the panel on left-click; its menu has Open Krovi, Show pill, Settings and Quit Krovi.

Keyboard shortcuts

Krovi is keyboard-first. These are the defaults; the summon hotkey is rebindable in Settings.

The 15 tools

Every tool works offline except where a live fetch is noted (Weather, exchange rates, and the optional ElevenLabs read-aloud). Tools marked New in v0.2 are in the next release, not in the v0.1.0 installer. Try most of them in the live demo.

Voice

Krovi can turn your voice into a note and run a fixed list of commands. Recognition runs on your PC with Windows speech (SAPI 5): there is no cloud speech service, no audio upload and no account. Voice starts when you press the mic, so nothing listens in the background and there is no wake word. Voice is new in v0.2.

Two modes

• Dictation. Press the mic in Notes and speak. Krovi turns what you said into a new note and refreshes the list.
• Commands. Press the mic from the pill or panel and say one of the commands below. Krovi acts on it right away.

While you talk, the pill shows Listening and then Processing. If something goes wrong it shows an error instead of failing silently. Because the recogniser only matches phrases it was given, accuracy is high for the fixed parts and lower for free text (note bodies, reminder titles, search terms); it was measured with synthesised speech, and real microphones differ. A phrase heard with low confidence does nothing if it would launch an app (“I am not sure I heard that right… Say it again.”).

Notation below: {a|b} means one of, [x] optional, <n> a number from 1 to 99 (spoken as words or digits), <text> free speech.

Commands

Open a Krovi tool

<tool> and the words that mean it: home (home screen, dashboard, overview) · clipboard (clipboard history, copy history, clips) · paste stack (paste, paste slots) · timers (timer, stopwatch, countdown, countdowns) · pomodoro (pomodoros, pomodoro timer, focus, focus timer, focus mode, focus session) · shelf (file shelf, files) · media (music, now playing, player, media controls) · calendar (agenda, schedule, events, reminder, reminders) · weather (forecast) · notes (note, notebook) · clocks (clock, world clocks, world clock, time zones, time zone) · convert (converter, conversion, currency, currency converter, unit converter, units, exchange rates) · calculator (calc) · screen time (screentime, app usage, usage) · settings (preferences, options, configuration).

A Krovi tool wins over a folder or app of the same name for open, show and go to, so “open settings” is Krovi’s Settings. Say launch for the installed Windows app (“launch settings”), or folder for the Windows folder (“open music folder”).

Timers, Pomodoro, close

Timers run from 1 second to 100 hours.

Notes

Reminders

The short opening “remind me” is the weakest for the recogniser; “set a reminder for …” held up best in testing. The date and time words are found by a local parser and removed from the title; what is left is the title. Understood time phrases (today is the day you say it):

Krovi reads back the exact date and time it resolved, for example “Reminder set for today, Sun 1 Nov, 5:00 PM: Call mom”. With no time spoken the entry is a calendar item with no alert, and says so. Reminders ring through Windows notifications; see Calendar for snooze, missed reminders and the Do Not Disturb caveat.

Using “this” (the selection you had when you started)

Both need something selected when you start; otherwise the answer says nothing is selected. Krovi reads the selection only when you start a voice command, and only the minimum.

Media

{next track|next song|skip track|skip song|skip this song|skip this track|play the next track|previous track|previous song|last track|last song|pause music|pause the music|pause playback|play music|resume music|resume playback|toggle music|what’s playing}. When typed, bare “pause”, “skip”, “play” and the longer “what song is this” forms also work.

Open a folder, or list what is in it

<folder> is exactly one of: Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Music, Videos (the Windows known folders, wherever OneDrive or you moved them), Krovi downloads (Downloads\Krovi, where Quick Transfer saves), and the folders in Explorer’s Quick Access (pinned and frequent) by their Explorer names. Spoken aliases: “docs” (Documents), “pics” (Pictures), “movies” (Videos). Nothing else is understood. Opening shows the folder in Explorer. “What’s in” reads the folder with the file system only: item count, files and folders, the total size of the files directly inside, the newest three by name, and up to 50 rows (newest first) in the panel. It does not look inside subfolders and skips hidden and system items.

Launch an app

<app> is one of the apps in your Start menu (Windows’ own app list plus Start-menu shortcuts), by the name shown there. Brand prefixes are optional (“chrome” for Google Chrome, “edge” for Microsoft Edge) and a few aliases are built in (“vs code”, “cmd”, “explorer”, “ppt”). A name that matches several apps equally launches nothing and lists the candidates. Web links, documents and uninstallers in the Start menu are not apps and are never launched.

Find a file by name

A bare “find …”, “look for …” or “locate …” is deliberately not in the spoken list (it made the recogniser swallow noisy audio that was really another command); typed, they work too. Find searches the Windows Search index for file names that contain your words (folders included), newest first, 20 results, shown as rows in the panel. A row opens its folder, or shows the file selected in Explorer; a found file is never run. There is no disk scan: only what Windows has indexed is searched (a freshly created file may not be indexed yet), and AppData is skipped.

Not supported (yet)

• Open-ended natural language, questions, chit-chat, or several commands in one sentence (“open notes and start a timer”).
• Folders and apps outside the sets above: any other path or drive, network shares, subfolders (“downloads slash invoices”), recent files, and websites or URLs. Voice never opens a web page.
• Searching file contents, searching inside one folder only, searching by type, date or size (“pdfs from last week”), non-indexed locations, the web, email or messages.
• Doing anything to a found file or folder by voice: open, run, copy, move, rename, delete or send.
• Quitting or closing apps and windows, killing processes, and system actions (shut down, volume, brightness, Wi-Fi, lock).
• Typing or dictating into other apps. Dictation only creates a Krovi note.
• Editing, deleting, snoozing or listing reminders by voice; recurring reminders (“every Monday”); years in dates (“march 3rd 2027”); “next year”.
• Languages other than English (US). Names that cannot be pronounced from their letters may not be heard.
• Hands-free “always listening” or wake words: voice only listens after you start it.

Voice and the network

Voice makes zero network calls: dictation, the commands above, folder and app lookups, file search and reminders all run against your PC. The audit’s Voice v3 section shows the evidence: a source audit with no network API in the voice crate’s dependency tree, and a runtime capture of real recognised commands in which the process owned no TCP or UDP endpoint at any sample (with a positive control to show the capture would have seen one). What a launched app does afterwards is that app’s business, exactly as if you had started it from the Start menu; Krovi never launches a web address.

Windows must allow desktop apps to use the microphone (Settings → Privacy & security → Microphone). If voice isn’t available on your machine, the mic is disabled and Krovi says so.

Settings

Privacy & verification

The privacy claim is meant to be checkable, not just stated. The source is public, and a written audit traces every place the app can open a network connection.

Every outbound request Krovi can make

That is the whole list of outbound requests. There is no telemetry, analytics, crash reporting, advertising, account or automatic update. Updating Krovi means downloading a newer installer yourself. Two things are not on the list because they are not outbound requests: voice (dictation and every voice command make zero network calls) and Quick Transfer, which runs a short-lived server on your own local network only while a share is open.

What is never sent

• Clipboard contents, notes, files, reminders and screen time. They stay on your PC.
• Audio from voice, and what you said. Speech is recognised locally, and voice makes no network calls.
• Text for the Explain summary. The summary is made on your PC. Only if you switch on the ElevenLabs voice is the text being read sent to ElevenLabs, and your key is kept in Windows Credential Manager, never in plain text.
• Screen time never includes window titles or URLs, even locally.

Verify it yourself

1. Read the audit: docs/SECURITY-network-audit.md.
2. Search the source from the repository root:
   PowerShell / bashCopy

   rg -n "ureq|TcpStream|UdpSocket|std::net::|fetch\(|XMLHttpRequest" src src-tauri/crates

3. Watch the wire: run Krovi under Resource Monitor (Network tab), Wireshark or Fiddler. You should see traffic to the hosts above only when you use Weather (or search for a city), refresh rates, or have switched on the ElevenLabs voice. Voice commands should show none.

This website

The site makes no third-party requests: no analytics, no cookies, no CDNs, no third-party fonts or embeds (the typefaces and videos are served from this site). A strict Content-Security-Policy tells your browser to refuse anything else. The live counter in the privacy section checks this in your own browser.

Data & storage

• Krovi keeps its data (clipboard history, notes, reminders, shelf items, screen-time totals and settings) in a local database in your Windows app-data folder, under %APPDATA%.
• There is no cloud copy and no sync. If you move to a new PC, copy the folder across or use your own backup.
• Clear your clipboard history from the Clipboard tool. Pinned items are kept unless you remove them.
• Copies flagged by password managers are never stored in the first place.

Browser demo

The live demo is the real panel UI running in your browser with in-memory sample data and no backend. Clicking the pill expands it exactly as in the app. It is a preview, not the product: it doesn’t read your actual clipboard, media session or files, and it doesn’t send anything anywhere.

The demo is a separate page on purpose. The home page embeds it as /demo/?embed=1, which makes the page background transparent so it can sit on a wallpaper.

Build from source

Krovi is MIT-licensed and builds from a plain checkout. You need Node.js 20 or newer for the interface and Rust for the native shell.

Interface only (the browser demo)

git clone https://github.com/nAItiklearn/krovi
cd krovi
npm install
npm test          # frontend unit tests
npm run dev       # demo at http://localhost:5173

The native app

Install the Tauri prerequisites for Windows. The recommended setup, and the one the release workflow uses, is the MSVC toolchain: Visual Studio Build Tools with the “Desktop development with C++” workload, and rustup default stable-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.

cd src-tauri
cargo build          # real integrations are on by default
cd ..
npx tauri build      # NSIS installer under src-tauri/target/release/bundle

$env:Path = "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Microsoft\WinGet\Packages\BrechtSanders.WinLibs.POSIX.UCRT_Microsoft.Winget.Source_8wekyb3d8bbwe\mingw64\bin;" + $env:Path
cd src-tauri; cargo build

Build this website

The site is static HTML under web/. scripts/build-web.ps1 builds the demo into web/demo/ and checks that the site root is the marketing page, never the app bundle. Serve it with any static server, for example npx serve web.

Uninstall

1. Quit Krovi: tray icon → Quit Krovi, or Ctrl + Q with the panel focused.
2. Open Windows Settings → Apps → Installed apps, find Krovi, and choose Uninstall.
3. Optional: delete your data. Krovi’s folders live under %APPDATA% and %LOCALAPPDATA%, in a folder named after the app (for example tech.krovi.app). There is nothing in the cloud to delete.

Troubleshooting

• The hotkey does nothing. Another app may own that combination. Pick a different one in Settings; Krovi reports a conflict instead of ignoring it.
• I can’t see the pill. Check the tray menu for Show pill, and remember it hides during fullscreen apps. Ctrl + Alt + Space or the tray icon still works.
• Media is empty. Krovi shows what Windows reports. If your player doesn’t appear in the Windows volume and media overlay, it isn’t sharing a media session.
• Weather won’t load. It needs a network connection and permission to use your location. Check Settings → Privacy & security → Location in Windows.
• Voice is unavailable. Allow desktop apps to use the microphone in Windows privacy settings. On devices where local recognition isn’t available, Krovi disables the mic and says why.
• My phone can’t open the Quick Transfer link. Check that the phone is on the same Wi-Fi as the PC. The first time Krovi listens, Windows may show an “Allow access” prompt: allow Krovi on Private networks. If no request reaches the share within about 20 seconds, Krovi says so and offers a read-only Check network that reports the address in use, whether Windows treats the network as Public or Private, and whether Krovi’s firewall rule exists. An Allow Krovi in the firewall button adds one rule (inbound, this program only, Private profile, local subnet) behind a Windows UAC prompt, only when you click it; Krovi never changes the firewall on its own. A network Windows classifies as Public is not helped by that rule: switch it to Private in Windows Settings. Quick Transfer is plain HTTP, so use a network you trust.
• A reminder didn’t pop up or make a sound. If Windows Do Not Disturb (or alarms-only) is on, Windows files the notification quietly in the notification centre without a banner or sound, and Krovi skips its own sound; the Calendar shows a warning when it detects this. Notification banners last about five seconds. Reminders missed while Krovi was closed fire once on the next start, marked as missed.
• SmartScreen warns about the installer. See Install. Krovi isn’t code-signed yet; verify the SHA-256 first.

Still stuck? Open an issue with your Windows version and what you expected.