BrainCue Copilot

Your AI copilot for live interviews.
Real-time transcription, question detection, and grounded answer cues — in a floating, screen-share-invisible panel.
Local-first. Bring your own OpenAI key.

Screenshots

_{The Cue Card — live transcript, streamed answer, and on-the-fly controls; invisible to screen sharing.}

Interview — pick a profile, start a saved interview.	Reports — every session, with a coaching report.
Mock — an AI interviewer; answers stream to the Cue Card.	Settings — your key, models, privacy, hotkeys.

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⚠️ Use only where AI assistance is permitted. Your data stays on your machine; only the retrieved context + the current question is sent to OpenAI.

Why BrainCue

• 🎙️ Live transcription & question detection — hears the interviewer (system audio) and flags the question being asked, in real time.
• 💡 Grounded answer cues — suggestions are drawn from your resume, the job description, and your notes via on-device retrieval (local RAG), not generic filler.
• 🪟 Floating Cue Card — an always-on-top panel that's excluded from screen sharing & recording, so it's there for you and invisible to everyone else.
• 🧪 Mock interview mode — an AI interviewer asks questions aloud and the copilot answers them in the Cue Card: a full rehearsal of the live experience.
• ⌨️ Global hotkeys — toggle the Cue Card, solve a copied problem, or drag-select a region of the screen to read and answer.
• 🔒 Local-first & private — data lives on your machine in a local database; your OpenAI key is encrypted by the OS keychain and never leaves the main process.

Download

Grab the latest installer from the Releases page:

• Windows — .exe (NSIS installer)
• macOS — .dmg
• Linux — .AppImage

Builds are currently unsigned, so the OS may warn on first launch — Windows SmartScreen ("More info → Run anyway"), macOS Gatekeeper (right-click → Open).

System requirements

BrainCue Copilot is a local desktop app that streams live audio to OpenAI for transcription and answers, so a steady internet connection and a microphone matter more than raw compute.

	Minimum	Recommended
OS	Windows 10 64-bit (version 2004 / build 19041+), macOS 11, or a modern 64-bit Linux	Windows 11, macOS 13+
CPU	Dual-core x64 / Apple Silicon	Quad-core or better
RAM	4 GB	8 GB+
Disk	~600 MB (app) + room for local data	2 GB+ free (profiles, vectors, transcripts)
GPU	Any (integrated is fine)	Discrete or modern integrated
Display	1280 × 800	1920 × 1080 or larger
Audio	Microphone	Mic + system-audio loopback (to hear the interviewer)
Network	Broadband internet	Low-latency broadband (for real-time transcription)

You also need your own OpenAI API key (set in Settings) and an OpenAI account with access to the models in use (Realtime/STT, Responses, embeddings, TTS, Vision).

Notes

• Privacy Mode (hiding the app from screen sharing/recording) is most reliable on Windows 10 version 2004+ and Windows 11; on older builds the window may show as black to viewers instead of being cleanly excluded.
• System-audio capture (the interviewer's voice in online calls) uses Windows loopback automatically. On macOS, capturing system audio needs a virtual audio device (e.g. BlackHole); the microphone path works without one.
• Hybrid-GPU laptops (e.g. NVIDIA Optimus): if a window shows up blank/black, launch with --disable-gpu (or set AI_DISABLE_GPU=1) to fall back to software rendering.

Stack

Electron · React · TypeScript · Vite (electron-vite) · TailwindCSS · Zustand · SQLite (better-sqlite3) · Drizzle ORM · OpenAI Node SDK (Responses, embeddings, STT/Realtime, TTS, Vision) · electron-builder.

Design docs

See docs/:

1. PRD
2. Architecture
3. Windows (main/renderer/overlay)
4. Database schema
5. IPC map
6. OpenAI service layer
7. API key security
8. Folder structure
9. MVP plan

Getting started

npm install
cp .env.example .env      # optional: put OPENAI_API_KEY for dev
npm run db:generate       # generate the initial Drizzle migration
npm run dev               # launch the app with HMR

In production you set the key in Settings (encrypted via OS secure storage).

Scripts

Script	Purpose
npm run dev	electron-vite dev (HMR)
npm run typecheck	type-check main + renderer
npm run db:generate	generate SQL migrations from the Drizzle schema
npm run build	typecheck + bundle
npm run icon	regenerate app icons from resources/icon.svg
npm run package / package:win / package:mac	build installer via electron-builder (auto-cleans release/ + kills running app first)

Releasing

Installers are built and published by GitHub Actions (.github/workflows/release.yml) — Windows, macOS, and Linux in parallel.

1. Bump version in package.json (and add a changelog/ entry).
2. Commit, then tag it to match: git tag v0.5.0 && git push origin v0.5.0 (the tag must equal v + the package.json version).
3. The workflow builds each platform and uploads to a draft GitHub Release named v0.5.0. Review it in the Releases tab and click Publish.

To produce installers without publishing (e.g. to test a build), run the workflow manually from the Actions tab — they're attached as downloadable artifacts instead.

Security invariants

• The OpenAI key lives only in the main process; the renderer learns a boolean apiKeyPresent and nothing more.
• All OpenAI/DB/secret access happens in main; the renderer talks via the typed window.api preload bridge.
• .env is gitignored; the key is never logged (logger redacts sk-…).

Project status

Actively developed. The core flows are in place — profiles, live session with grounded answers, the Cue Card, region/clipboard solve, mock interviews, and coaching reports. See the changelog for what ships in each release and docs/09-MVP-PLAN.md for the roadmap.