Build from source

Kudu is open source (MIT). The Mac app is Swift; the Windows and Linux app is Rust. Both live in one repository.

git clone https://github.com/manasdutta04/kudu.git && cd kudu

macOS

Needs Swift 6.2 or newer (Xcode or the Command Line Tools) on an Apple Silicon Mac.

cd macos && scripts/build-app.sh && open build/Kudu.app

To keep the Accessibility permission across rebuilds, sign with a stable certificate: scripts/setup-dev-signing.sh creates one.

Windows

Install Rust, the Visual Studio Build Tools (“Desktop development with C++”) and CMake.

PowerShellcd desktop; cargo build --release; .\target\release\kudu.exe

Linux

Ubuntusudo apt install build-essential pkg-config cmake libasound2-dev libssl-dev libxkbcommon-dev libwayland-dev libx11-dev libdbus-1-dev
Fedorasudo dnf install gcc-c++ pkgconf cmake alsa-lib-devel openssl-devel libxkbcommon-devel wayland-devel libX11-devel dbus-devel
cd desktop && cargo build --release && ./target/release/kudu

Without CMake you can build without smart formatting: cargo build --release --no-default-features.

How the code is laid out

macos/The Mac app: SwiftUI and AppKit, speech on the Neural Engine, Apple Intelligence.
desktop/crates/kudu-coreThe text pipeline, shortcuts and learning, shared by Windows and Linux.
desktop/crates/kudu-engineMicrophone, speech recognition (sherpa-onnx), the optional language model (llama.cpp).
desktop/crates/kudu-appThe app: background process, Windows and Linux layers, overlay, tray and the settings window.

Contributions are welcome: see CONTRIBUTING.md.