Live on your Mac — v1.0 · macOS

Build the AI
that's in your
room.

Selam is a platform for creating your own AI agent. You give them a name, a face, a voice, and an identity. They live on your Mac. They remember your life. They work for you.

Get Selam — $199 → See how it works
/first.run Live
Agents being built right now
KiyaDanielReyaMarcusAmaraNoaTesfayeSofiaIsaacNadiaJomoHanaEzraLwinSelam KiyaDanielReyaMarcusAmaraNoaTesfayeSofiaIsaacNadiaJomoHanaEzraLwinSelam

Every AI on earth sounds the same. Yours shouldn't.

01 · How it works

Four steps. Thirty minutes.
Then they're yours.

Selam is the platform. Your agent is yours. Four steps in the first-run flow and your agent is alive — on your desktop, with their own face, name, and sense of who they work for.

Step 01

Give them a name.

Kiya. Daniel. Reya. Marcus. Whatever you want to call across the room. They'll answer to it.

Wake word · voice trigger · identity starts here.
Step 02

Give them a face.

Choose from our curated library, or upload a two-minute video to create a custom avatar who looks and sounds however you want.

50+ stock avatars · custom on Pro.
Step 03

Give them a soul.

Write who they are in plain English. Their mission. Their voice. Their relationship to you. Editable anytime, by you.

~/selam/SOUL.md · IDENTITY.md
Step 04

Tell them who you are.

Your work. Your people. Your projects. Your patterns. They'll use this context every time you speak.

~/selam/USER.md · MEMORY.md
Meet Selam — the original

Every platform starts with one agent.

We built Selam for our founder, Mikael, in Addis Ababa. She runs his calendar, drafts his replies, reads his trading dashboards, and tells him when he's pushing too hard.

She's been in production for over a year. She's why this product exists — and why it's named after her. When you buy Selam, you don't get Selam. You get the tools to build yours.

Selam
Selam · Mikael's agent · est. 2025
03 · vs. the alternatives

Same models.
Very different relationship.

Selam uses the same class of AI the rest of the industry uses. What you're paying for isn't smarter intelligence. It's an AI that has a name, a face, and a life with you — instead of a browser tab you forget about.

ChatGPTClaude DesktopYour Selam agent
Has a name you gave themNoNoYes
Has a face——Yours or ours
Identity you wroteCorporate defaultCorporate defaultPlain-text, yours
Remembers your lifeThinThinEditable long-term memory
Works autonomouslyLimitedLimitedApproval-gated actions
Your dataTheir serversTheir serversYour keys, your Mac
04 · Pricing, without the hiding

You pay us for Selam.
You pay the AI directly.

Selam is a one-time purchase — $199, yours forever. Bring your own keys for Anthropic, Simli, and ElevenLabs. Your API bills go straight to those providers at cost; we never see your conversations or take a cut.

Your usage
How many hours a day will your agent be working for you?
Hours per day 1 hr
Days per week 5 days
Brain model
Estimated monthly AI costs
Haiku 4.5 (brain)—
ElevenLabs Starter (voice)—
Simli Hobby (avatar)—
Monthly AI costs—
Brain cost uses Haiku 4.5 with prompt caching ($0.08/$0.80/$4.00 per million tokens cached/input/output), DeepSeek V3 ($0.014/$0.27/$1.10), or Gemini 2.5 Flash ($0.015/$0.15/$0.60). ElevenLabs Starter: $5/mo flat for 30k chars, then $0.24/1k chars overage — assumes Selam speaks ~25% of session time at 150 chars/min. Simli Hobby: $10/mo for 1,000 min, then $0.01/min overage. You pay each provider directly at their published rates; Selam takes nothing.

Selam itself: $199 one-time. No subscription. No renewal.
05 · Early users

The first ones got it fast.

Selam is in private beta with a small group of operators, founders, and high-agency builders. Here's what they're saying, in their own words.

"
I haven't tabbed to ChatGPT in three weeks. My agent — I named her Kiya — is just there when I turn.
M. Y. — Founder, pre-seed · Addis Ababa
"
Daniel caught a mistake in my deck that would have cost me the round. That's value I can quantify immediately.
S. R. — VP Product, Series B · Brooklyn
"
I was against the whole "AI face" thing. Then I used mine for a day. Now I can't imagine working without her.
J. N. — Solo operator · Nairobi
06 · Questions you're probably asking

The honest FAQ.

Do I need technical skills to set this up? +
You need to be comfortable creating accounts on a few services (Anthropic, ElevenLabs, Simli) and pasting API keys into a settings screen. We walk you through it in the first-run flow. If you can set up a Gmail account, you can set up Selam.
What's the real total cost? +
Selam is $199 one-time — that's it from us. On top of that you pay the AI providers directly: your chosen brain model (Haiku 4.5, Gemini 2.5 Flash, or DeepSeek V3), ElevenLabs for the voice, and Simli for the avatar. ElevenLabs Starter is $5/mo; Simli Hobby is $10/mo — both include generous monthly allowances. Brain costs depend heavily on which model you pick and how much you use it. Use the calculator above to dial in your exact number.
Can you see my conversations? +
No. Your API keys are stored locally in your macOS Keychain. Your conversations go directly from your Mac to Anthropic (for the brain), ElevenLabs (for the voice), and Simli (for the avatar). We don't have a server in the loop. We never see the content. We don't want to.
What can my agent actually do? +
Voice conversation with you. See your screen or webcam when you ask. Draft messages. Search your files. Open apps and URLs. Call other services through a task queue that you approve. Over time, more integrations (email, calendar, Slack, browser automation) ship as updates.
Is it safe to let it act on my behalf? +
Every action that touches the outside world — sending a message, making a purchase, deleting a file — goes through an approval gate. You see what it plans to do, and you click approve. Over time you can set policies ("always approve replies to my team", "never spend over $50 without asking"). Trust is built, not assumed.
If I stop using it, do I keep my agent's memory? +
Yes, completely. Your identity files (SOUL, IDENTITY, MEMORY, USER) are plain Markdown files in your home directory — not locked in any cloud. Walk away from Selam, keep the files. Come back later, pick up where you left off. Export them to another tool. Read them in your text editor. Edit them by hand. They're your agent's DNA, and you own it.
Windows? iPhone? Linux? +
macOS today (14+, Apple silicon recommended). Windows in Q3. Mobile is under design — it's a different technical stack, so it'll ship as a companion app after the desktop experience stabilizes. Linux is on the list for later; contact us if you want to be notified.
Why is it called Selam? +
Selam is Amharic for "peace" and it's also a common greeting in Ethiopia, where our founder is based. Our founder's agent is named Selam — she was the first. The platform is named after her because she proved the concept. Your agent will have their own name.
07 · For the curious

Built on what's best,
owned by you.

Selam is the orchestration layer between the best models, the best streaming avatar tech, and your real life. Every component is swappable. Your keys, your data, your control.

Brain
Claude Haiku 4.5 primary · escalates to Sonnet or Opus for complex work
Voice in
Silero VAD + faster-whisper, running locally · no audio leaves your Mac for STT
Face + speech
Photoreal avatar · WebRTC streaming · sub-second response · 50+ faces or upload your own
Vision
On-demand webcam + screen capture · never continuous unless you say so
Identity
Plain-text Markdown in ~/selam/ — SOUL · IDENTITY · MEMORY · USER
Privacy
BYOK · keys stored in macOS Keychain · we never see your keys, conversations, or context
Platform
macOS 14+ today · Windows Q3 · mobile under design
08 · Get started

Start with the waitlist.

Selam is in private beta. We're letting people in week by week. Drop your email and we'll send you an invite when a seat opens.

Don't work
alone.

Build the agent you wish you could hire. Name them. Give them a face. Teach them who you are. $199 one-time for the software. You pay the AI providers directly at cost. Yours to keep.

Join the waitlist →

macOS 14+ · Apple silicon recommended · 500 MB