AI agents that ask before they act, with one approval inbox

Barside has AI agents that ask before they act. They work in the background, on a schedule, after a call or on a research question, and write their results into notes in your library. Anything that changes something for you, such as adding tasks, setting a reminder, opening an email draft or running a saved workflow on its schedule, waits in one approval inbox until you press Approve. Nothing is sent or changed outside Barside without that click.

Barside is a free desktop app for Windows, Linux and Mac. Its agents use the AI you connect in Settings → AI (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or OpenRouter), and your library stays on your computer.

AI agents that ask before they act: how they work

Scheduled agents, the meeting agent and the research agent follow the same rule. They may read what they need and write their own result, such as a briefing note or a research note. Everything else is a proposal. Saved workflows replay the AI assistant, which asks before every action in another app.

• Without asking: reading your open tasks, reminders, recent notes, calendar events and matching Library passages, and writing the agent’s own note.
• Only after you approve: adding a checklist of tasks to a note, creating a reminder, opening an email draft, a saved workflow’s scheduled run, and replies from the Space helper when the owner chose Ask me first.
• Never: sending an email. Approving an email opens your email app with a draft, and you press send there.

The proposals collect in Agents & approvals → Inbox, with a count in the sidebar. Open it from the sidebar, the tray menu (Approvals (N waiting)), or the quiet notification Barside shows when something new waits. Every ready-made mode keeps Agents & approvals in the sidebar. If you leave it out of a Custom Mode, it waits on the More tab, and the search bar still finds it.

The four agents

Agents & approvals has six tabs: Inbox, History, Scheduled, Meeting, Research and Workflows.

Scheduled agents

A scheduled agent writes a note at set times from your open tasks, reminders, recent notes, calendar events and Library search, and, if you choose, from what came into Reading since its last run. Choose New scheduled agent, or start from a preset: Morning briefing (weekdays at 8:30 AM), Weekly review (Fridays at 4:00 PM) or Social posts from newsletters (every day at 9:00 AM, with drafts for LinkedIn, X and Threads from your new newsletters). Under Also reads, choose New newsletters in Reading or New newsletters and articles in Reading. You can also ask the assistant in plain words, for example "draft a few social posts from my newsletters each day": it asks which workspace and how often, shows what it will set up, and starts it when you approve. Give it a Name and Instructions in plain words, then pick how it Repeats (Every day, Weekdays, Weekly or Monthly) and a Time. Under Results, pick A new note each run, or Add to an existing note, which adds a dated heading each time.

Each card shows the next run and has Run now, Edit, Pause, Delete and Open latest note. An agent may suggest up to five actions per run: reminders, a checklist of tasks for its note, or one email draft. It uses only email addresses that appear in what it read or in your instructions, so it never guesses a recipient. If you only want to see what is due today, the daily briefing shows it on one live page, with no AI at all.

Meeting agent

The meeting agent turns a call into a follow-up. On the Meeting tab, tick After each call transcript, prepare a follow-up (it is off by default). It then runs when a call transcription finishes or a Barside meeting ends with a transcript. You can also choose any transcript or meeting note under Run on a note and press Prepare follow-up.

It uses the same analysis as Meeting follow-through in Library and fills the Inbox with a Follow-up checklist for the transcript note, reminders for tasks with a stated deadline, and a recap email. Read meeting follow-up and action items to see how it keeps invented tasks out.

Research agent

On the Research tab, type a Question, add up to 5 Links to read first if you have them, choose where to Save the note in, and press Start research. The agent searches DuckDuckGo and reads up to 5 public pages, with at most two from one site and no PDFs, documents or media files. It writes a note called “Research · …” with your question, a summary that cites each fact like [1], and a numbered list of sources. If the AI left out the citations, the note says so. Readable copies of the pages are saved as bookmarks on the note, so AI search can find them later. The card lists every site Barside contacted.

Saved workflows

When the AI assistant finishes a job you will repeat, choose Save as workflow under its answer, type a Workflow name and press Save workflow. Barside keeps your request and the steps that worked, without typed passwords, keys or card numbers. On the Workflows tab, press Run, Rename or Schedule, or run it from the search bar, where it appears as “Run workflow: …”. A scheduled workflow never starts on its own: at its time it asks in the Inbox, and approving opens the assistant, which still asks before each action in another app.

The saved workflows guide walks through saving, running and scheduling one, step by step.

What you can do in the approval inbox

Each card names the agent, how long ago it asked, and exactly what will happen: the task list, the reminder text and time, or the email’s recipient, subject and body.

1. Read the preview. Open note jumps to the note the proposal came from.
2. Press Edit to change it first: the tasks (one per line), the reminder text and time, or the email’s To, Subject and Message. Undo edits puts it back.
3. Press Approve. Tasks are added as a checklist at the end of the note, so they also show on the task board. A reminder becomes a new note with a reminder, and an email opens in your email app as a draft.
4. Or press Refuse, then Refuse again to confirm. Keep leaves it waiting.

If an approved action fails, the card stays in the Inbox with the error, so you can try again or refuse it. Proposals survive a restart. If Barside closed while one was running, the card says so, and it is never retried by itself.

The History tab lists every run, approval, refusal and error with its time. Filter it by Agent and Result (Done, Failed, Refused, Skipped or Note), search it, or press Clear history. The latest 1,000 entries are kept on your computer.

Set up your first agent

1. Connect an AI in Settings → AI. One click connects Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or OpenRouter; without one, agents cannot run.
2. Open Agents & approvals in the sidebar, or press Alt+Shift+Space in any app and type agents in the search bar.
3. On Scheduled, choose the Morning briefing preset.
4. Adjust the Instructions if you like, for example: “Start with my client deadlines.”
5. Keep A new note each run under Results and pick a Workspace, leave Run on schedule ticked, and press Create agent.
6. Press Run now to see the first note, then check the Inbox for anything it proposes.

Examples

• A consultant keeps the Weekly review preset on Fridays. It lists open tasks and reminders for next week and points out anything that looks stuck. The reminders it suggests wait in the Inbox for one pass of approvals.
• A team lead turns on the meeting agent. After each call, a Follow-up checklist and a recap email draft are waiting. He adds the recipients on the card, approves, and sends the email from his own email app.
• A student asks the research agent “What are the main differences between passkeys and passwords?” and gets a note with numbered sources that AI search can answer from later.
• A freelancer saves “bookmark every tab of this window into a new note” as a workflow and runs it again next month with one click.

Scheduling rules and limits

• Times are your local clock times. On a daylight saving change the hour is kept: a time that does not exist runs at the next valid moment, and a repeated hour runs once.
• A monthly agent set to day 29, 30 or 31 runs on the last day of shorter months.
• Barside checks the schedule every 30 seconds. Scheduled runs never start while the computer is locked or asleep, and one AI-backed agent runs at a time while the others wait.
• After Barside was closed, asleep or locked, only the latest missed run is made up, and only if it was planned in the last 12 hours. Older ones show as skipped in History.
• Editing, pausing or resuming an agent starts its schedule fresh from that moment.
• You can keep up to 50 scheduled agents and 100 saved workflows.

Agents work the same on Windows 10 and 11, on Linux and in Barside for Mac. Saved workflows replay the assistant, so they can do what the assistant can do on your system. On Linux it can list, focus and minimize windows and press keys, but it cannot read the controls inside other apps. On a Mac, it reads and presses them through System Events, once you allow Barside under Accessibility.

Agents that run while your computer is off

With Barside Plus (US$20 a month or US$200 a year, plus sales tax), Settings → Cloud agents → Run scheduled agents in the cloud runs your scheduled agents on Barside’s server at their times, even when your computers are off. They need cloud sync and a connected AI, and they use your own AI key, which Barside keeps encrypted and uses only to run your agents. A cloud run reads your synced notes, tasks and reminders, but not your calendar or Library search. Its note reaches your computers through sync, and what it proposes still waits in the approval inbox. The meeting agent and saved workflows stay on your computers, and Remove my AI key from Barside deletes the key at any time.

The cloud agents guide has the setup, what a cloud run can read, and what happens to your AI key.

Privacy: what agents send and keep

• Agents use the AI you connected. An agent’s instructions and the notes, transcripts or pages it works with go to that AI company, whose data policy applies.
• Notes and workspaces you leave out of Library AI, in Library & briefing → Sources, are never given to an agent.
• The research agent sends your search to DuckDuckGo and opens the pages it reads, without your browser’s cookies or sign-ins. Scheduled agents and the meeting agent contact nothing but your AI company.
• The Inbox and its History stay on your computer and are not part of backups. Your scheduled agents, saved workflows and the meeting setting are part of your library, so they travel in its ZIP backups.

Read how agents use your data and the overview of agents and approvals.

How it compares

A chat window answers when you ask. Barside’s agents prepare work on their own schedule, next to the notes they read, and every action they propose waits for your click. If you are choosing a home for your notes and your AI, compare the Notion alternative guide and the list of the best second brain apps. For follow-ups after calls, see how Barside compares with the best AI meeting assistants. If you would rather work in Claude Desktop or ChatGPT, Barside also gives them tools through AI connections, and those tools never delete anything. Your notes, agents and workflows stay in your local-first library.

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