moltis is a free, open source ai interaction & interfaces project written in Rust and released under MIT. It has 2,865 GitHub stars, 347 forks and 83 open issues, and was last pushed 3 days ago. On this registry it ranks #58 of 76 tracked projects in AI Interaction & Interfaces, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available. It gained 2 stars over the last 3 tracked days.

What is moltis?

What it is

Moltis is a secure persistent personal agent server written in Rust and released under the MIT license. It lives in the Rust AI-agent and self-hosted assistant ecosystem, and it presents itself as one binary that runs on user-owned hardware. The project targets a personal agent that can keep state across sessions, call language models from multiple providers, and expose its behavior through chat channels and tools without relying on a hosted service.

The concrete problem it solves is the gap between a local personal assistant and a broad agent platform. Many agent stacks depend on Node.js, Python, plugin marketplaces, or external gateways, which can make installation, auditing, and isolation harder. Moltis addresses that by bundling the server, memory, voice, scheduling, channel integrations, and MCP tool support into a Rust workspace, while placing commands inside sandboxed containers so the host is not used directly.

Key capabilities

  • It provides built-in speech-to-text and text-to-speech providers, so voice input and voice output are part of the server.
  • It stores memory with SQLite, full-text search, and vector memory, which supports cross-session recall and searchable personal context.
  • It connects to Telegram, Signal, Discord, WhatsApp, and Teams, giving the agent several chat entry points.
  • It supports MCP servers over stdio and HTTP/SSE, allowing external tools to be exposed to the agent through a common protocol.
  • It runs commands through Docker, Podman, Apple Container, or WASM backends, and it uses managed deploy keys with host pinning for remote execution.
  • It exposes authentication through passwords, passkeys, API keys, and Vault, while keeping model keys on the user's machine.

Who uses it and how

  • A user can run Moltis on a Mac Mini, a Raspberry Pi, or another owned server, then access the agent through local chat channels instead of a hosted assistant.
  • A personal workflow can use Telegram, Signal, Discord, WhatsApp, or Teams as message surfaces, with memory and scheduling available across sessions.
  • An advanced setup can use SSH or node-backed remote execution, browser automation, and MCP tools while commands remain inside sandboxed containers.

Getting started

Users can install Moltis with the macOS or Linux shell script, Homebrew, the Docker image ghcr.io/moltis-org/moltis:latest, or Cargo from the GitHub repository.

When to use it — and when not to

Moltis fits users who want a self-hosted personal agent in Rust, one binary, and sandboxed execution. It is less suitable for users who do not want to operate infrastructure, because the README places the server on user hardware and lists SQLite, auth, and container backends as local responsibilities. The data shows 83 open issues and no contributor count, so maintenance depth is unclear.

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline

Moltis

Moltis — A secure persistent personal agent server in Rust

One binary — sandboxed, secure, yours.

CI codecov CodSpeed License: MIT Rust Discord

InstallationComparisonArchitectureSecurityFeaturesHow It WorksContributing


Moltis recently hit the front page of Hacker News. Please open an issue for any friction at all. I'm focused on making Moltis excellent.

Secure by design — Your keys never leave your machine. Every command runs in a sandboxed container, never on your host.

Your hardware — Runs on a Mac Mini, a Raspberry Pi, or any server you own. One Rust binary, no Node.js, no npm, no runtime.

Full-featured — Voice, memory, cross-session recall, automatic edit checkpoints, scheduling, Telegram, Signal, Discord, browser automation, MCP servers, SSH or node-backed remote exec, managed deploy keys with host pinning in the web UI, a live Settings → Tools inventory, Cursor-compatible project context, and context-file threat scanning — all built-in. No plugin marketplace to get supply-chain attacked through.

Auditable — The agent runner and model interface fit in ~7.5K lines, with providers in ~19K more. The Rust workspace is ~270K lines across 59 modular crates you can audit independently, with 470+ Rust files containing tests. Unsafe code is isolated to FFI and precompiled runtime boundaries, not the core agent loop.

Installation

# One-liner install script (macOS / Linux)
curl -fsSL https://www.moltis.org/install.sh | sh

# macOS / Linux via Homebrew
brew install moltis-org/tap/moltis

# Docker (multi-arch: amd64/arm64)
docker pull ghcr.io/moltis-org/moltis:latest

# Or build from source
cargo install moltis --git https://github.com/moltis-org/moltis

Comparison

OpenClaw Hermes Agent Moltis
Primary stack TypeScript + Swift/Kotlin companion apps Python + TypeScript TUI/web surfaces Rust
Runtime Node.js + npm/pnpm/bun Python + uv/pip, optional Node UI pieces Single Rust binary
Local checkout size* ~1.1M app LoC ~152K app LoC ~270K Rust LoC
Architecture Broad gateway, channel, node, and app ecosystem CLI/gateway agent with learning loop and research tooling Persistent personal agent server with modular crates
Crates/modules npm packages, extensions, apps Python packages, plugins, tools, TUI 59 Rust workspace crates
Sandbox/backends App-level permissions, browser/node tools Local, Docker, SSH, Daytona, Singularity, Modal Docker/Podman + Apple Container + WASM
Auth/access Pairing and local gateway controls CLI and messaging gateway setup Password + Passkey + API keys + Vault
Voice I/O Voice wake and talk modes Voice memo transcription Built-in STT + TTS providers
MCP Plugin/integration support MCP integration stdio + HTTP/SSE
Skills Bundled, managed, and workspace skills Self-improving skills and Skills Hub support Bundled/workspace skills + autonomous improvement + OpenClaw import
Memory/RAG Plugin-backed memory and context engine Agent-curated memory, session search, user modeling SQLite + FTS + vector memory

* LoC measured with tokei, excluding node_modules, generated build output, dist, and target.

Full comparison in the docs →

Architecture — Crate Map

Current Rust workspace: ~270K LoC across 59 crates. The table below groups the main crates by role so the architecture stays scannable.

Core runtime:

Crate LoC Role
moltis-gateway 37.4K HTTP/WS server, RPC, auth, startup wiring
moltis-tools 37.0K Tool execution, sandboxing, WASM tools
moltis-providers 18.9K LLM provider implementations
moltis-agents 14.5K Agent loop, streaming, prompt assembly
moltis-chat 14.2K Chat engine, agent orchestration
moltis-config 10.3K Configuration, validation
moltis-httpd 9.9K HTTP server primitives and middleware
moltis (CLI) 4.7K Entry point, CLI commands
moltis-sessions 3.5K Session persistence
moltis-common 1.5K Shared utilities
moltis-service-traits 1.2K Shared service interfaces
moltis-protocol 0.7K Wire protocol types

Feature and integration crates:

Category Crates Combined LoC
Channels moltis-telegram, moltis-whatsapp, moltis-signal, moltis-discord, moltis-msteams, moltis-matrix, moltis-slack, moltis-nostr, moltis-channels 34.0K
Web and APIs moltis-web, moltis-graphql, moltis-webhooks 10.8K
Extensibility moltis-mcp, moltis-mcp-agent-bridge, moltis-skills, moltis-plugins 11.5K
Memory and context moltis-memory, moltis-qmd, moltis-code-index, moltis-projects 11.7K
Voice and browser moltis-voice, moltis-browser 9.2K
Auth and security moltis-auth, moltis-oauth, moltis-vault, moltis-secret-store, moltis-network-filter, moltis-tls 8.5K
Scheduling and automation moltis-cron, moltis-caldav, moltis-auto-reply 4.7K
Setup and import moltis-provider-setup, moltis-openclaw-import, moltis-onboarding 11.7K
Native and node hosts moltis-swift-bridge, moltis-node-host, moltis-courier 5.7K
WASM tools moltis-wasm-precompile, moltis-wasm-calc, moltis-wasm-web-fetch, moltis-wasm-web-search 1.4K
Supporting crates moltis-media, moltis-metrics, moltis-tailscale, moltis-routing, moltis-canvas, moltis-schema-export, benchmarks 2.1K

Use --no-default-features --features lightweight for constrained devices (Raspberry Pi, etc.).

Security

  • Small unsafe surface — core agent/gateway code stays safe Rust; unsafe is isolated to Swift FFI, local model wrappers, and precompiled WASM boundaries
  • Sandboxed execution — Docker + Apple Container, per-session isolation
  • Secret handlingsecrecy::Secret, zeroed on drop, redacted from tool output
  • Authentication — password + passkey (WebAuthn), rate-limited, per-IP throttle
  • SSRF protection — DNS-resolved, blocks loopback/private/link-local
  • Origin validation — rejects cross-origin WebSocket upgrades
  • Hook gatingBeforeToolCall hooks can inspect/block any tool invocation
  • Supply chain integrityartifact attestations, Sigstore keyless signing, GPG signing (YubiKey), SHA-256/SHA-512 checksums

See Security Architecture for details. Verify releases with gh attestation verify -R moltis-org/moltis or see Release Verification.

Features

  • Reasoning Defaults - Configurable default thinking effort for model-less and new main sessions, with explicit per-session Off or level overrides
  • AI Gateway — Multi-provider LLM support (OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, Local), streaming responses, agent loop with sub-agent delegation, session modes, parallel tool execution
  • Communication — Web UI with command-palette agent prompts and Markdown copy/export, Telegram, Signal, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Slack with native live tool cards, Nostr DMs + NIP-29 group chat (incl. Block's Buzz channels), API access, voice I/O (8 TTS + 7 STT providers), mobile PWA with push notifications
  • Memory & Recall — Per-agent memory workspaces, embeddings-powered long-term memory, hybrid vector + full-text search, session persistence with auto-compaction, cross-session recall, Cursor-compatible project context, context-file safety scanning
  • Managed Files - Authenticated nested file management in Settings, with an agent-advertised host path and independent read-only-by-default mounts for Docker, Podman, a

readme truncated — read the full docs on github

Frequently asked questions

Is moltis free to use?

moltis is open source under the MIT licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does moltis do?

A secure persistent personal agent server in Rust. One binary, sandboxed execution, multi-provider LLMs, voice, memory, Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, Teams, and

What is moltis written in?

moltis is primarily written in Rust. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/moltis-org/moltis, and it has 2,865 GitHub stars.