Atua

Keyboard-summoned macOS AI assistant that reads your screen and drives system apps with your own API keys.

Paid· One-time $29, lifetime updates, 7-day refundAgentsMulti-model (BYO key)

Best for

Pick Atua if you want a hotkey-summoned macOS copilot that can read your screen and drive system apps using your own provider keys.

Skip if

Skip it if you're on Windows or Linux, need a managed subscription with bundled inference, or want an open-source assistant.

Atua is a native macOS app that puts a context-aware AI assistant one hotkey away. Hit Option-Space from any app and it picks up your selected text, clipboard, a screenshot, OCR'd window content, or voice input, then runs a model of your choice against it. The killer feature is the system tool integration: Atua can drive Calendar, Reminders, Notes, Finder, Shortcuts, the shell, and HTTP, plus MCP servers for GitHub, Postgres, Slack, and Filesystem, so prompts can actually do work rather than just return text.

It's bring-your-own-key across 15+ providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Groq, Mistral, DeepSeek, and others), which makes it appealing for people who already pay for API credits and don't want yet another subscription. Pricing is a one-time $29 with lifetime updates and a 7-day money-back guarantee. There's no account, no telemetry, and everything except the outbound model calls stays on-device. It's macOS-only and there's no free trial, just the refund window.

If you live in Raycast / Alfred / Shortcuts territory and want a Cmd-K layer that can both reason and take action across your local apps, Atua is a credible alternative to Raycast AI or MacGPT, especially because you pick the model and pay per token rather than per seat.

Editor's take

Atua is the rare BYO-key macOS assistant that takes MCP and system tools seriously instead of just being a text box. The $29 lifetime price makes it an easy bet against Raycast AI's subscription if you already have provider credits. macOS-only and closed-source are the obvious ceilings.

— The AI Tool Bible editorial team