Getting started

Vehla is a macOS menu-bar app built around one floating command palette. Summon it anywhere in macOS to launch apps, reuse smart clipboard items, transform clipboard images, generate QR codes, pick symbols, capture notes, move windows, run Shortcuts, manage Homebrew packages, control system toggles, or ask local/cloud AI.

Install

Download the DMG from vehla.app/download. Open it, drag Vehla.app into Applications, eject the DMG, launch the app. Vehla lives in your menu bar — look for the small aurora glyph next to your battery icon.

Permissions

Vehla asks for a few macOS permissions as you use features:

• Accessibility. Required to read selected text from other apps. Without it, the "selection" input is unavailable but clipboard and paste still work.
• Input Monitoring. Required for the global hotkey. Without it, you'll have to click the menu-bar icon to open the palette.
• Screen Recording. Required for Snipe Text, screenshot capture, and screen-region vision actions. Vehla captures only the region you drag over.
• Contacts, Calendar, and Reminders. Requested only when you use contact search, calendar actions, or reminder actions.
• Full Disk Access. Optional. Browser bookmark/history search may ask for it if macOS blocks access to the browser databases.

Permissions are reversible from System Settings → Privacy & Security at any time. Vehla does not capture context until you invoke it or use a feature that needs that context.

Your first action

1. Open any app with text. Mail, Notes, your editor — anything.
2. Select a paragraph.
3. Press ⌥ Space (or your custom hotkey).
4. Type a few letters of the action you want — rew prof finds "Rewrite — Professional" — and hit ↵.
5. Or type ask why is this paragraph unclear? to start an Ask AI chat with the question already filled in.
6. The result streams in. Copy it, paste it back into the front app, or continue the conversation with a follow-up.

Onboarding

The first launch walks you through a short setup you can re-run anytime from Settings → General → Run onboarding again:

1. Welcome. Overview of the universal palette, on-device AI, and global shortcuts.
2. Hotkeys. Bind Open Vehla, Rewrite Selection, Capture Area, Snipe Text, and Window Management.
3. Permissions. Grant Accessibility, Screen Recording, and Calendar.
4. Local AI. Pick and download an on-device Gemma model.
5. Notch / Island. Turn on the top-screen surface and choose the Notch or Island presentation.
6. Canvas & Notes. Learn the bottom-bar Canvas button and the swipe-right gesture for Notes.
7. Ready. Optionally enable "Open Vehla at login," then press ⌥ Space to start.

Keyboard shortcuts

Palette shortcuts and aliases autocomplete as you type. For example, type ama, use ↑/↓ to choose Amazon, press ↵, then continue typing your search. Settings → Hotkeys also lets you bind any AI action or native command to its own global shortcut, and window management ships with Control + Option defaults.

Launch view & model picker

When the palette opens empty, Vehla shows your recently used apps first, then recently used native shortcuts, then AI actions. You can clear recent apps or recent shortcuts from their section headers.

The footer has three controls:

• Shortcuts. Opens the built-in shortcut guide.
• Settings gear. Opens Vehla Settings.
• Model picker. Shows the active local/cloud model. Click it to switch local MLX models or cloud providers. Cloud providers without API keys and local models that are not downloaded are disabled.

Native palette actions

Vehla is also a native Mac command palette, not only an AI prompt runner. These actions run directly from the palette and do not need an AI model:

• Apps. Type an app name to launch it. App results use clean display names without the .app suffix.
• Smart Clipboard. Search clipboard history with clip, :clip, or clipboard, preview text and images, pin entries, filter image clipboard items, clear history, OCR clipboard images, resize/convert clipboard images, clean formatting, extract links, and ignore sensitive apps.
• Emoji. Type emoji for the grid picker, emoji fire to search by name, pin favorites with ⌘D, and choose a default skin tone from the emoji settings gear.
• Utilities. Type math expressions, unit conversions, currency conversions, password/UUID generators, QR code requests, spelling checks, dictionary lookups, date math, time zones, Base64, URL encoding, hashes, case transforms, color values, symbols, SF Symbols, and Unicode lookups.
• Web. Open domains directly, or use g, ddg, yt, wiki, maps, a, and aca for Google, DuckDuckGo, YouTube, Wikipedia, Maps, Amazon US, and Amazon Canada.
• macOS Shortcuts. Run Apple Shortcuts with shortcut Focus Mode, shortcuts Focus Mode, or run shortcut Focus Mode.
• Homebrew. Search packages, install formulae/casks, inspect package info, list outdated packages, upgrade, uninstall, run doctor, or clean up with brew commands.

Clipboard history

Typing clip, :clip, or clipboard opens Smart Clipboard. The left side is a keyboard-navigable list; the right side previews the selected text or image and exposes actions.

• Paste. Paste the selected clipboard item into the previous front app.
• Copy. Copy the selected text or image back to the system clipboard.
• Pin / Unpin. Keep important clips at the top. ⌘D pins the selected item.
• Clear. Clear clipboard history from the preview pane or Settings.
• Images. Use clip image for image-only history. Duplicate screenshots are deduped by image hash.
• OCR. Use ocr clip, ocr clipboard, or extract text from clipboard image to recognize text locally from a clipboard image and copy it.
• Resize. Use clipboard image resize commands to create a resized copy of the image currently on your clipboard.
• Convert. Use clipboard image convert commands to change the clipboard image into another common format.
• Smart actions. Ask AI about copied text, clean formatting, extract links, summarize clipboard content, or use clipboard history as RAG context.

Emoji picker

Type emoji to open the grid picker or emoji fire to search. Arrow keys move through the grid, ↵ copies the selected emoji, and ⌘D pins or unpins the current emoji. Pinned emoji appear first. The gear in the emoji section lets you set Default, Light, Medium-Light, Medium, Medium-Dark, or Dark skin tone for supported emoji.

Quick utilities

Vehla includes small utilities that usually force a browser or separate app:

• qr https://vehla.app creates a QR code from a URL, text block, or supported payload.
• color #7C5CFF opens the color palette and copies values as hex, RGB, HSL, or SwiftUI formats.
• symbol arrow, sf paperplane, or unicode check opens the symbol picker for SF Symbols, Unicode marks, arrows, currency symbols, and punctuation.
• math opens the math scratchpad for running calculations, conversions, and quick numeric notes.
• commands opens the command reference when you want to browse everything Vehla can run.

Files, apps & system

File search uses Spotlight with a fallback scan of common folders, so recent Downloads and Documents can still appear even when Spotlight is catching up.

• find budget or file budget searches files. File rows include inline buttons to reveal in Finder, copy the path, or move the item to Trash.
• copy file report to desktop and move file report to ~/Documents run native copy/move operations and show a feedback row with "Reveal result in Finder".
• copy finder selection to downloads, move finder selection to downloads, and reveal finder selection operate on the current Finder selection.
• latest screenshot, copy latest screenshot, open latest screenshot, and reveal latest screenshot search Desktop and Pictures/Screenshots for the newest screenshot.
• folder dock opens pinned folders for fast reveal, copy, and drag-friendly access.
• settings, pref, and preferences search System Settings panes. eject and unmount show removable volumes. quit, kill, and force quit search running apps with upgraded feedback.
• System commands include lock screen, screen saver, display sleep, sleep Mac, restart, Force Quit window, empty Trash, terminal commands, music controls, and Wi-Fi / Bluetooth toggles where macOS allows them.
• window left, window right, window center, window maximize, thirds, corners, and top/bottom commands move the focused window using Accessibility. layout commands save or restore common app/window arrangements.

Port and process tools

Developer cleanup commands help when local servers and background processes get stuck:

• port 3000 shows which process is listening on a port.
• kill port 3000 stops the process using that port.
• process node searches running processes by name and exposes quit or force-quit actions.
• quit and force quit use the upgraded app/process feedback flow so you can see what will be closed.

Brew Store

Vehla can act as a keyboard-first Homebrew store. Type brew or homebrew for the overview, then search, inspect, install, uninstall, upgrade, or run maintenance commands without remembering exact flags.

• brew search rectangle searches formulae and casks off the main thread and shows install actions.
• brew install wget or install brew raycast opens Terminal with the correct install command for the selected package type.
• brew info ffmpeg opens package info.
• brew outdated shows outdated packages; brew upgrade upgrades all, and brew upgrade node upgrades one package.
• brew uninstall package, brew doctor, and brew cleanup cover the common maintenance path.

Contacts, calendar & reminders

• cn sam searches Contacts. Contact rows include email, call, FaceTime, and open-card buttons.
• cal design searches upcoming Calendar events.
• new event Design review tomorrow 3pm for 90m creates a native Calendar event with natural dates, explicit durations, and optional calendar targeting.
• rem rent searches Reminders. create reminder Pay rent tomorrow 9am, add reminder, new reminder, and remind me to create reminders with due dates and optional list targeting.
• complete reminder invoice finds open reminders and marks the selected one complete.
• Reminders can also appear in the Notch / Island surface for lightweight glanceable prompts.
• bm docs searches Safari, Arc, and Chromium bookmarks. hist docs searches browser history.

Inputs & context

The palette assembles its input from a few places:

1. Pasted text. If you paste into the palette, that becomes the input. The query field stays clean for filtering actions.
2. Clipboard. Used automatically if "Use clipboard as palette input" is enabled in Settings → General.
3. Selection. Highlighted text in the front app, captured when you press the hotkey.
4. Screen region. Snipe Text and vision actions use a region you drag over. OCR runs locally through Apple Vision.
5. Front app. Vehla tracks the frontmost app name for context labels, snippet variables, and action routing.

The context label in the palette tells you whether Vehla is using pasted text, clipboard text, selected text, files, images, or the front app.

Output & copy

Responses stream as Markdown and render visually — headings, lists, code blocks, bold, italic. When the stream finishes, the result is auto-copied to your clipboard. You can also use the Copy button in the result view.

• Formatted (RTF). Default. Pastes with bold, headings, lists into Mail, Pages, Notion, Slack — anywhere that respects rich text.
• Plain. Strips Markdown syntax (**, #, etc.) and emits clean plain text.

Palette themes

Under Settings → General → Palette appearance you can restyle the command palette. Choose from Default, Light, Midnight, Liquid Glass, Clear Liquid Glass, Translucent Cold, Translucent Warm, Minimal, Obsidian, Graphite, and Nordic. The theme applies to the palette window and its surfaces.

AI

AI action catalog

Vehla ships with a large library of built-in AI actions. Type to fuzzy-search them by title, subtitle, or category, or browse a category with a colon prefix such as :rewrite, :code, or :email. Every action can be favorited (⌘D), hidden, given an alias, or bound to a global hotkey. You can show or hide any action from Settings → Palette Actions.

• Rewrite (10 tones). Professional, Friendly, Concise, Confident, Casual, Executive, Funny, Gen Z, Technical, and Customer Support.
• Writing. Summarize, Shorten, Expand, Fix Grammar, Convert to Bullet Points, Convert to Markdown, Explain, ELI5, Smart Compose, Translate Tone, and Improve Prompt.
• Translate (10 languages). English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Hindi, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), and Arabic.
• Code. Explain Code, Refactor Code, Convert Language, Debug Code, Generate Tests, and SQL Helper.
• Terminal. Generate Shell Command, Explain Shell Command, and Fix Shell Error.
• Email. Smart Reply, Accept Meeting, Decline Meeting, Follow-up, Summarize Thread, Refund Reply, and Support Triage.
• Social. Make it a Tweet, Generate Caption, Generate Hooks, Generate Hashtags, and Rewrite for Virality.
• Clipboard. Clipboard Action (transform whatever is copied), Clean Clipboard Formatting, and Extract Links.
• Tasks & productivity. Extract To-dos, Generate Calendar Event, Meeting Notes, Summarize Webpage, Extract Key Details, Decision Memo, Pros / Cons, Turn Into Checklist, Commit Message, PR Description, Release Notes, and Bug Report.
• Privacy. Remove Sensitive Info redacts emails, keys, and other secrets before you share text.

Ask AI & Ask Memory

Ask AI is a raw chat. Type ask why is this unclear? to open a conversation with your question pre-filled, then send follow-ups. It uses your active provider, persona, and memory settings, but does not read your notes.

Ask Memory is a private retrieval chat over your own content. Trigger it with ask memory, recall, ask notes, chat notes, or knowledge. Vehla builds a local index over your Markdown notes and clipboard history, retrieves the most relevant passages, and answers with numbered citations like [1], [2]. When it runs on a local model, the chat shows an "On-device · private" pill; otherwise it names the cloud provider. Only notes and clipboard text are indexed — not files, email, or calendar.

Vision & screen capture

Vehla has three vision actions that read an attached image or screenshot: Describe Image, Extract Text from Image, and Ask About This Image. Press ⌥⇧S (Capture Area) to drag a region of the screen and jump straight into "Ask About This Image." Vision is cloud-only — the local Gemma model is text-only — so vision actions route to a vision-capable cloud provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, or OpenRouter) with a visible routing notice.

Agent actions & tools

Agent actions let the AI take a step before answering by calling built-in tools. These require a cloud provider that supports tool calling (OpenAI or Anthropic):

• Research and Reply. Fetches pages and searches the web, then answers.
• Schedule from Selection. Reads a date out of text and writes a Calendar event.
• Draft and Paste. Writes a reply and pastes it directly into the front app.
• Fact Check / Find Claims. Pulls out claims and checks them against the web.
• Generate Calendar Event. Drafts event details, then creates the event.

The tools available to the model are: Fetch URL (read the readable text of a public page), Web Search (via a Brave Search API key you add in Settings → Providers), Create Calendar Event (EventKit, needs Calendar permission), and Paste Into Front App. If a tool needs a key or permission you have not set up, Vehla tells you what is missing.

Surfaces

Beyond the palette, Vehla adds optional always-available surfaces. Each is off by default and can be toggled from Settings or the menu-bar icon's right-click menu.

Notch / Island

A Dynamic-Island-style surface at the top of the screen. Enable it in Settings → Notch / Island and pick a presentation: Island (a floating liquid-glass capsule below the menu bar) or Notch (attached to the built-in display's notch). Only one runs at a time. Hover to reveal it, scroll horizontally to switch modes, and it auto-hides when idle. Its modes:

• Bucket. Drop files, images, links, or text onto the surface to stage them, then drag them back out.
• Music. Artwork, a visualizer, and playback controls for Spotify or Apple Music, with scrubbing and (for Spotify) a "Playing next" queue. Connect Spotify from Settings.
• Next Up. Your next calendar events with a live countdown and one-tap Join for Zoom, Meet, Teams, and Webex; optionally folds in due Reminders.
• Timer. Appears whenever a timer is running, with a progress ring.
• Clipboard. A quick view of recent clips, with optional AI row actions.
• Ask. A "Quick Ask" chat that uses your current provider, persona, and memory.

Shelf

A Dropover-style drag shelf for temporarily holding files, images, links, and text. Enable it in Settings → Shelf, then summon it by pressing ⌃⌥B while dragging, by "jiggling" a drag (quickly reversing direction a few times), or from the menu-bar menu. Drop items in, then drag them back out where you need them. Each item's context menu offers Open, Open With, Copy To, Move To, Save, Create ZIP, Unzip, Compress, Create Folder, Rename, Share, and Remove. You can run multiple shelves at once, and empty shelves auto-close. The jiggle trigger needs Accessibility.

Folder Dock

An iOS-style folder strip that sits next to the macOS Dock. Enable it in Settings → Folder Dock. Pin folders by clicking the + tile, using "Add Folder…", or dropping items onto it — dropping apps and files creates a new folder of shortcuts. Each tile shows a 3×3 preview; click to open a paginated grid, click an item to open it, and hold ⌘ while dragging an item out to remove it. The dock re-anchors itself as the macOS Dock moves (which uses Accessibility for precise placement).

Floating bubble

An always-visible, draggable orb that summons the palette with a click — the same as pressing ⌥ Space. Turn it on with Settings → General → Floating AI bubble and drag it anywhere on screen.

BarKeep

A built-in menu-bar tidier. Enable Settings → BarKeep → Hide menu bar icons and Vehla adds a separator and a chevron next to its icon. Command-drag the icons you want hidden to the left of the separator; click the chevron to expand or collapse them. An optional auto-collapse tucks them away after a few seconds. Right-click the separator for quick options, including disabling BarKeep.

Timers

Start a countdown right from the palette: timer 5 minutes, timer 30 seconds, timer 1h 30m, or label it with timer pasta 25m. A bare number is treated as minutes, and countdown 10m works too. Active timers show in the palette footer and in the Notch / Island, survive relaunches, and play a sound with a notification when they finish.

More commands

Folder shortcuts

Dot-prefixed keywords jump straight to a folder. Built-in shortcuts include .home, .desktop, .documents, .downloads, .apps, .pictures, .music, .movies, .public, .network, and .icloud. Add your own in Settings → Folder Shortcuts with a keyword and path, then run it as .keyword. Folder shortcuts sync through iCloud.

Window management & layouts

Vehla moves the focused window using Accessibility. Quick snaps work right from search: halves (window left, window right, window top, window bottom), corners (window top left, etc.), thirds, window center, and window maximize. Throw windows across monitors with window next display and window previous display. Type layouts to open the layout manager: the Layouts tab saves and applies multi-app window arrangements, and the Auto-Layout tab snaps an app into place when it launches. Window Management also ships with Control + Option hotkey defaults you can rebind in Settings → Hotkeys.

Music controls

Control Spotify (if running) or Apple Music from the palette with play, pause, playpause, next, and previous. Type now playing to see the current track and copy it. Richer playback lives in the Notch / Island Music mode.

Media downloads

Vehla is also a download manager built on yt-dlp and ffmpeg. Type download for the download center, or paste a link:

• download audio <url> and download video <url> grab media; formats <url> lets you choose a specific format.
• file download <url> (or direct download) fetches a regular file. Pasting a bare URL auto-detects whether it is a direct file or a video.
• extract playlist <url> pulls playlist URLs so you can copy or download them all.
• Manage active and past downloads — pause, resume, cancel, retry, open, or reveal — and clear history.

Settings → Media Downloads shows the health of yt-dlp and ffmpeg (version, path, and an "Install with Homebrew" button), your download and history locations, and recent failures.

Speed test

Type speedtest, speed test, or internet speed to run a Cloudflare-based connection test — ping, download, and upload — with live progress right in the palette.

Snippets

A snippet is a reusable prompt with template variables. Snippets are filtered by typing / in the palette.

{selection}     # the selected/pasted input text
{clipboard}     # the system clipboard
{app}           # the front app name, when available

Example: a "PR description" snippet

Title: PR Description
Trigger: /pr
Prompt:
Write a pull-request description for the following diff.
Use sections: Summary, Test plan.
Keep bullets concise and user-facing.

---
{selection}

Text expansion

Snippets can also expand system-wide. Turn on Settings → Snippets & Expansion → Expand snippets anywhere, and whenever you type a snippet's trigger (like /pr) in any app, Vehla replaces it with the rendered body. This is separate from filtering snippets inside the palette.

• Match mode. Expand instantly as soon as the trigger is typed, or only after a space or punctuation.
• Dynamic placeholders. {clipboard}, {date}, {time}, {datetime}, {date:FORMAT}, {app}, {uuid}, and {cursor} (or $|) to position the caret after expansion.
• Safe by design. Expansion is skipped in password and secure fields, inside Vehla itself, and in any apps you add to the exclusion list. Your clipboard is restored after each expansion.

Text expansion needs Input Monitoring (to detect the trigger) and Accessibility (to replace it).

Custom AI actions

Custom AI actions let you turn your own prompt into a first-class palette action. Use them for repeatable rewrites, team-specific checks, support macros, code-review prompts, sales replies, or any private workflow that should behave like a built-in action.

• Give the action a name, category, and prompt.
• Use context variables such as {selection}, {clipboard}, and {app} when the action needs current Mac context.
• Favorite the action, bind it to a hotkey, or give it an alias for faster launching.

Custom searches

Custom Web Searches let you create keyword shortcuts for any URL template. Add them in Settings → Custom Searches, choose a keyword, and include {query}, {query%}, or {query+} in the URL.

Title: GitHub
Keyword: gh
URL: https://github.com/search?q={query+}

Custom searches sync through iCloud key-value storage, so the same keyword list follows you to your other Macs.

Workflows

Workflows are user-defined keyword actions for opening URLs, running shell commands, or running script files. Configure them in Settings → Workflows, then trigger them from the palette with the workflow keyword and optional query text.

• Open URL. Expand a URL template and open it in your browser.
• Shell command. Run a command through zsh, with the palette query inserted into your template.
• Script file. Run a local script file with the query as input.

Workflows also sync with iCloud.

Aliases

Aliases let you name commands the way you naturally type. Add short triggers for built-in commands, native shortcuts, custom AI actions, searches, and workflows so the palette matches your muscle memory.

Examples: shot for latest screenshot, wm left for window-left, brewup for Homebrew outdated/upgrade, or legal for a custom legal-safe rewrite action.

Action & command hotkeys

Settings → Hotkeys lets you promote common palette work into direct keyboard shortcuts:

• Window Management. Move the focused window to halves, corners, thirds, center, or maximize. Defaults use ⌃⌥ combinations and require Accessibility permission.
• Action Hotkeys. Bind any AI action, such as rewrite, summarize, translate, or Ask AI, to a global shortcut. Vehla captures the current selection or clipboard before running it.
• Native Command Hotkeys. Bind direct commands such as clipboard, emoji, latest screenshot, OCR clipboard image, clipboard image resize/convert, Homebrew, workflows, folder shortcuts, Shortcuts, aliases, and web searches.

Clipboard & file settings

Settings now includes dedicated tabs for native palette tools:

• Clipboard. Manage pinned clipboard items, clear pinned/history state, and review ignored apps. Sensitive apps such as password managers can be ignored so clipboard items from them are not ingested.
• File Ops. Review recent successful copy/move operations, reveal results in Finder, and undo the latest supported file operation from Settings.
• Custom Searches. Add, remove, and sync web search shortcuts.
• Workflows. Add URL, shell command, and script-file workflows.

Command reference

Settings → Command Reference lists native palette actions and aliases in one place. It is useful when you forget whether a command starts with cal, rem, bm, hist, settings, emoji, clip, qr, symbol, port, layout, window, shortcut, latest screenshot, ocr clipboard, brew, or another shortcut.

Notes and RAG

Quick Capture and the Markdown note editor keep lightweight notes inside Vehla. Use quick capture (or press ⌥⇧N) to jot something down, open the Notes workspace from the palette footer or by swiping right, and use Ask Memory to chat with notes, clipboard history, or the current input as retrieval context. The Notes workspace has a sidebar, folders, tags, [[wikilinks]], image attachments, backlinks, and live Markdown preview. Notes are stored in Application Support, and you can point them at an iCloud Drive folder from Settings → Privacy & Pro → Notes Storage.

Canvas

Vehla includes a full Excalidraw drawing canvas. Open it from the Canvas button in the palette footer, sketch with the complete Excalidraw toolset, and organize canvases into folders with tags and search. Rename a canvas inline, export it as PNG, and let Vehla autosave every change. Canvases live in Application Support and can sync through an iCloud Drive folder from Settings → Privacy & Pro → Canvas Storage.

Personas

A persona is a small style block that's silently prepended to every prompt. Use it to lock the voice across actions without writing it into each snippet. A persona has four fields:

• Name. Shown in the palette footer when active.
• Tone. One-line description of the voice.
• Vocabulary. Words you do and do not use.
• Forbidden. Words and phrases to never produce ("just", "leverage", "delve", emoji, etc.).

Memory notes

Memory is a single plain-text note (max 4 KB) that's injected at the top of every prompt as system context. Use it for things Vehla should always know:

My name is Sam. I'm the founder of Vehla.
I write in American English. I prefer en-dashes, never em-dashes.
My company is Kaila Consulting Inc., based in Ottawa, Canada.
Customers usually email from a +work address.

Vehla Packs

A Vehla Pack is a shareable bundle of palette customizations — workflows, aliases, custom searches, custom AI actions, snippets, and personas. Import and export packs from Settings → Vehla Packs (or Privacy & Pro). Vehla also ships with starter packs — Productivity & Email, Writing & Content, Developer Essentials, and Research — that you can preview and install in one click, then uninstall cleanly later. Packs never include API keys, license keys, clipboard history, notes, or canvases.

Local models

Vehla ships with an MLX-based local inference runtime. The default model is Gemma 4 E2B (4-bit), an estimated 2.5 GB download for fast on-device replies. You can switch to Gemma 4 E4B (4-bit) for stronger quality or Gemma 4 E4B (8-bit) for the highest local quality. Settings also lets you relocate downloaded model files if you want them on a different volume or need to free space.

To install a local model:

1. Open Settings → Models.
2. Choose a model from the catalog.
3. Click Download. Progress shows in the menu bar.
4. Toggle "Use Local AI" in Settings → General.

Text-only actions run entirely on-device when Local AI is on and a downloaded model is available. Local Gemma is text-only, so image and tool-using actions route to your selected cloud provider with a visible notice.

You can also switch providers from the palette footer. Downloaded local models and configured cloud providers are enabled; unavailable options stay visible but disabled, so it is clear what needs an API key or download before use.

Cloud API keys

Vehla stores every key in macOS Keychain. We do not have a server, so the keys go from your Mac directly to the provider. Per provider:

• OpenAI — paste a key starting with sk-.
• Anthropic Claude — key starts with sk-ant-.
• Google Gemini — paste your AI Studio key.
• DeepSeek — paste a key from the dashboard.
• OpenRouter — one key, all models.

The model picker disables cloud providers that do not have a usable key, so you can see what's configured without trying a request first. Switch between local and cloud models directly from the palette whenever the task changes.

Ollama

Already running Ollama? Point Vehla at it.

1. Settings → Providers → Ollama.
2. Base URL: enter your local Ollama endpoint, usually http://localhost:11434.
3. Model: any tag you've pulled, e.g. llama3.2:3b.

Ollama behaves like a cloud-provider slot pointed at your own local endpoint. Keep Ollama running before selecting it in the palette footer.

Activation

Buy a Pro license, currently $20.99 for 30% off the regular $29.99 price. The purchase confirmation page shows your license key and downloads vehla-license.txt. Paste the email and license key into Settings → Privacy → License. Two activation slots, one per Mac. Reinstalling on the same Mac reuses the slot.

Deactivate a Mac

Need a slot back? Go to Settings → Privacy → License and click "Deactivate this Mac". The slot is released immediately and Vehla returns to unlicensed mode on that Mac.

Updates

Vehla periodically checks an HTTPS update manifest, downloads the new DMG when available, and verifies the DMG's SHA-256 before installing. If the hash doesn't match, the update is refused.

Privacy mode

Toggle "Use Local AI" in Settings → General to route text-only AI actions to the selected local Gemma model. If the local model is unavailable, Vehla shows an error instead of silently falling back to cloud. Vision and tool-using actions cannot run on local Gemma; those requests route to your selected cloud provider only when that provider is configured, and Vehla shows a routing notice.