Zhiyin

Developer preview 0.1.0-alpha.1

An AI agent for your PC.

Tell it what you need in plain words. Zhiyin does the work in a folder you choose, and asks before it changes anything.

Download for Windows

Free and open source · 64-bit Windows · 185 MB

See it work

One request, start to finish.

Recorded in the app for the trailer: a three-day trip to Shanghai for a sister's thirtieth, planned on a €800 budget.

  1. You ask, in plain words.

    Type what you need the way you would say it, choose the folder it works in, and send.

  2. It asks what it needs to know.

    When a choice would change the work, it asks a few short questions instead of guessing.

  3. It works, and shows its work.

    It searches, reads, adds up and draws. Every step is listed with what it was for and how it went.

  4. It asks before it changes anything.

    Before it edits a file, runs a command or uses an online service, it stops and waits for you.

  5. You see each change, line by line.

    Open the file to read exactly what will change before you decide. Deleting a file, running a command and running Python always ask.

  6. Allow it, and get the result.

    Allow it once, or for the rest of the conversation. The finished PDF opens beside the conversation.

  7. Changed your mind? Go back.

    Edit an earlier message and send it again. The files it changed go back as they were.

Sped up

One app, all kinds of work.

Four more requests, each run once with a low-cost model and recorded from start to finish. Here is what Zhiyin did, and what each whole run cost.

Make my bakery a website.

Asked what the bakery is like, wrote the page and its styles, then opened it in its own browser to check how it looks.

$0.035 for the whole run

We're thinking about a heat pump for our 1970s house near Lyon. Is it worth it in 2026, and what help can we get? Please double-check the numbers.

Asked a few questions, searched and read the sources, and had a fact-checker verify the figures before it answered.

$0.13 for the whole run

Where did our money go this year? Show me in a chart.

Read a year of bank transactions and charted the spending by category and by month.

$0.0104 for the whole run

Quiz me on chapter 4 before my exam.

Read the chapter, wrote a ten-question quiz, then scored the answers and explained each one.

$0.0066 for the whole run

Each run used deepseek/deepseek-v4.1-flash through OpenRouter. The costs are what OpenRouter reported for it.

Turn on the know-how you need.

A plugin brings the skills and tools for one kind of work. Four come with Zhiyin. Each one you turn on is used only when a task calls for it.

You can also make your own, with skills, specialists and connectors to online services.

The app is free.
You pay for the AI you use.

You choose the AI model and pay its provider directly, for what you use. Zhiyin keeps each request lean, so long tasks stay cheap, and shows what every conversation cost.

Zhiyin
Free and open source, under the Apache License 2.0.
$0
The AI model
Pay as you go through OpenRouter, one account for models from many companies. $5 of credit is enough to start.
from $5
Web search
Tavily's free plan gives 1,000 credits a month, with no card needed. A basic search uses one.
free

Why “Zhiyin”

zhīyīn, one who knows the tune

Bo Ya played the qin, and his friend Zhong Ziqi understood every piece: when the music turned to high mountains, he heard the mountains, and when it turned to flowing water, he heard the river. The word came to mean a friend who understands what you mean. That is what Zhiyin is for.

Open source, and checkable.

Every line is on GitHub. Each installer is built by GitHub from the tagged source, and published with its SHA-256 and a build record you can verify yourself.

View the source
Check where the installer came from
PS> gh attestation verify .\Zhiyin-Setup-0.1.0-alpha.1.exe --repo ZhiyinAgent/Zhiyin

Give it something to do.

Download for Windows Read the setup guide

The installer is not code-signed yet, so Windows asks you to confirm: choose More info, then Run anyway.