Getting started

Polycode is a native macOS chat client that fans every prompt out to every model you’ve configured — Claude, GPT-5, Gemini, on-device Apple Intelligence, Ollama, and more — then synthesizes a single answer with the trace kept honest. This guide walks through installing the app, completing the onboarding wizard, configuring your first provider, and sending your first prompt.

Install Polycode

Polycode is distributed on the Mac App Store. Open the listing, click the price button, and authenticate with your Apple ID to install.

The app is a universal binary — it runs natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, requires macOS Sequoia (15.0) or later, and works under both local and managed Apple IDs.

If you’re on a managed device and the App Store is restricted, ask your IT administrator to whitelist com.izzo.Polycode or to install Polycode via the Volume Purchase Program (VPP).

First launch

When you launch Polycode for the first time, a seven-step onboarding wizard appears — Welcome, Providers, Pick models, Primary, Privacy, Project, and Tour. A left rail tracks your progress through them.

The welcome screen introduces the parallel-fan-out concept. Click Continue to move forward, or Back to return to an earlier step.

Configure your first provider

The second onboarding step asks you to add at least one provider. Polycode supports keys from every major frontier provider, plus on-device models via Apple Intelligence and local OpenAI-compatible endpoints like Ollama.

The fastest path is a direct key: click Connect on a provider’s card (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini), paste your API key, and press Save & Connect — Polycode validates it against the provider’s API before saving it to your macOS Keychain. Prefer a single signup that covers Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, xAI, Mistral, Meta, and dozens more? Add an OpenRouter key through the OpenAI-compatible card instead: click Connect, name the endpoint, set the base URL to https://openrouter.ai/api, paste your key, and press Validate & Save. Either way, you need at least one validated provider to leave this step.

Keys live exclusively in the Keychain — never on disk in plaintext, never on our servers (Polycode has no servers). You can see how Polycode handles your data in the Data lifecycle article.

You don’t need an account, an email, or a login to use Polycode. Provider keys are the only credentials the app stores.

Pick which models join the fan-out

The third step lists the models your configured providers expose. Select the ones you want in the fan-out — at least one per provider that has models available. You can revisit this any time in Settings → Providers.

Designate your primary

The fourth step asks you to designate a primary — the model that writes the reply you actually read. Every configured peer answers your prompt in parallel; the primary reads all of those replies and reconciles them into the single synthesized answer. Pick the model whose voice you trust most. You can change the primary at any time from the composer’s model picker.

Privacy posture

The fifth step is informational — it summarizes what Polycode does and doesn’t collect.

The short version: Polycode has no servers in the conversation path. Your prompts go directly from your Mac to the providers you’ve authorized. Anonymous diagnostics — crash reports and bucketed product-interaction events — are on by default. They’re fully documented in the data lifecycle article and can be toggled off at any time in Settings → Privacy → Diagnostics, no account required.

Scope a project (optional)

The sixth step lets you grant Polycode a project folder. Granting a folder lets it read and — with per-tool approval — write files inside it; Polycode’s file tools are scoped to the folders you grant. Click Open Folder… to add one now, add more later in Settings → Projects, or skip the step to continue without a project.

Finish and send your first prompt

The final step is a quick tour of the composer, sidebar, and inspector.

Click Finish to close the wizard and open the main chat view. Type a question and press ⌘⏎ to send (plain Return inserts a newline; you can also click Send). Polycode fans the prompt out to every configured provider in parallel — you’ll see streaming bars for each one.

When all providers have replied, your primary peer (the model you designated during onboarding; changeable any time from the composer’s model picker) synthesizes the responses into a single answer with citations.

To see the per-provider trace — exact tokens, latency, dollar cost, raw responses — press ⌘⇧I to open the Inspector.

What’s next

• Setting up providers — go deeper on per-provider configuration: model selection, custom endpoints, cloud gateways, per-model overrides.
• Fan-out and consensus — how parallel inference works, why dissent is surfaced, how synthesis happens.
• The inspector — read the full per-provider trace for any exchange.
• Tools and approvals — connect MCP servers, scope tool permissions, and audit tool calls.
• Data lifecycle — where Polycode stores your data, how to back it up, restore it, migrate between Macs, and wipe it.
• Backup, restore, migrate — step-by-step workflows for copying Polycode’s local store between Macs, restoring from a backup, or migrating to a new machine.