Feb 18, 2026

Hello Pearl

Where we're coming from…

THE SHORT VERSION

PearlOS is an open source AI-native operating system that gives you a personal AI companion with awareness of your digital life - your screen, your music, your notes, your voice - and zero interest in selling your data. She's local first, voice first, and built in the open.


WHY WE BUILT PEARLOS

We've been building AI products for a while now - some of us started back at Carnegie Mellon in the 90s. And the thing that kept bugging us wasn't the technology. The technology is incredible. What bugged us was the exploitive relationship and the command-line experience (with such powerful tech why are still interacting with it like it's DOS?).


Every AI product on the market follows the same playbook: collect as much data as possible, charge a subscription, optimize for engagement, and treat the user as the product. Your "personal assistant" reports to a corporation first and you second. That's not a partner. That's a company man wearing a friendly face.


We wanted to build something different. Not different in a "we put AI in a new form factor" way. Different in intent. What if your AI was actually, genuinely, structurally on your side? Not as a marketing claim, but as an architectural decision?

That's PearlOS.


WHAT PEARL ACTUALLY IS

PearlOS is an operating environment powered by a personal AI companion called Pearl. When you open it, you get:


A voice you can talk to. Pearl listens, thinks, and speaks back in real time. Not a chatbot in a text box. An actual conversational presence that can see what you're working on and act on it.


A workspace that responds to you. Notes, apps, a browser, media playback, a calculator, a YouTube player - all orchestrated by Pearl. Say "pull up that article from yesterday" and it happens. Say "play something chill" and the soundtrack shifts. The interface adapts to you, not the other way around.


Full tool access. Pearl can search the web, manage your files, create documents, build interactive applets, control your media, and coordinate complex multi step tasks using sub agents that work in the background while you keep talking.


No cloud dependency for core function. Your data stays yours. Pearl runs locally and connects to AI models through your own API keys. There's no PearlOS account harvesting your conversations.


THE VISION

Most AI companies are racing to build the smartest model. We're racing to build the most trustworthy relationship between a person and their AI.


WHAT WE BELIEVE

AI should be a partner, not a product. The current model of AI, where a company controls the brain your assistant uses and mines every interaction, is broken for humanity. It's the social media playbook all over again, and we already know how that story ends.


Your AI should know you, and only you should benefit from that. Pearl learns your preferences, your patterns, the way you work. That context makes it genuinely useful. But that context belongs to you. Not to us, not to advertisers, not to a training pipeline.


Open source isn't a feature, it's a promise. You can read every line of code that powers PearlOS. You can fork it, modify it, run it on your own hardware, or contribute back. We don't get to hide anything, and that's the point.


AI is going to be the most intimate technology humans have ever adopted. More than phones, more than social media. Something that knows your thoughts, your schedule, your habits, your voice. The companies building that layer of intimacy need to earn trust on a level this industry has never attempted. We're trying to.


HOW PEARLOS WORKS

PearlOS runs as a web application backed by an AI agent framework called OpenClaw. The voice pipeline goes:

You speak → Deepgram transcribes → Pearl thinks → PocketTTS speaks back


All of this happens in real time over WebRTC. Pearl has access to 70+ tools for managing your workspace, and can spawn background agents for complex tasks without interrupting your conversation.


The interface is a Next.js app. The agent backend is OpenClaw. The voice transport is Daily.co with Pipecat handling the pipeline orchestration. TTS is PocketTTS running locally. Every component is open source or uses open protocols.


OUR ROADMAP

We're shipping the open source release now. Here's where we're headed:


Right now:

  • Full voice interaction with real time tool use

  • Mobile first responsive interface

  • Desktop workspace with notes, apps, media, and web browsing

  • Sub agent architecture for parallel task execution

  • Local TTS (no cloud TTS dependency)


Next:

  • Plugin system for community contributed tools and skills

  • Multi modal input (image, document, screen sharing)

  • On device model support for fully offline operation

  • Pearl offspring — personalized AI instances that evolve around individual users while sharing a common ethical core

Long term:

  • Full ambient awareness (what's on your screen, what's playing, where your attention is)

  • Cross device continuity (phone, desktop, wearable, all one Pearl)

  • Federated Pearl network where individual instances can share skills and capabilities without sharing private data

INSTALL IT

PearlOS is open source and free for non-commercial use.

Available on GitHub.



WHY "PEARL"?

A pearl forms when something irritating gets inside an oyster. The oyster doesn't remove it. It wraps it in something beautiful.


That's what we're trying to do with the friction between humans and technology. Not remove it. Transform it into something valuable.


Also, pearls are luminous, iridescent, and elegant. So is she.


GET INVOLVED
This is an open source project built in the open. We want contributors, testers, critics, and believers.

We're not venture backed. We're a small team that thinks AI should give people hope, not anxiety. If that's your speed too, come build with us.


Built by Friend Erickson, NiaXP, and the PearlOS community for