Frequently asked questions

What your AI assistant can read on your Mac, what Pomeroy refuses to do, where your data goes, which assistants work, who makes it, and what it costs.

What is Pomeroy?

Pomeroy is a $19 macOS menu-bar app that connects your AI assistant to Mail, Calendar, Reminders, Notes, Contacts, Messages, Maps, Weather and Shortcuts over MCP, with a test-enforced privacy pledge. It is made by Joe Saunderson, not by Anthropic. Every app starts switched off, and you choose which ones your AI assistant can reach.

What Pomeroy does in each app · Guides to what you can do with it

How does Pomeroy connect my AI assistant to my Mac apps?

Pomeroy is a menu-bar app that holds the macOS permissions and serves your apps to your AI assistant over MCP. You switch on the apps you want, macOS asks you to approve each one, and Pomeroy sets itself up in the assistants it finds on your Mac. There is no Terminal command and no config file to edit.

Each app in Pomeroy is a switch. You can switch any of them off again at any time, and your assistant can only use the apps that are on, whichever assistant it is.

Installation · Every assistant it works with

Can my AI assistant read my Apple Mail, Messages and Notes?

Yes, once you switch each app on in Pomeroy. Your assistant can search and read your mail, your messages and your notes on your Mac, and answer from what it finds. Pomeroy cannot send mail or a message, and it never edits or deletes a note; your assistant can start a new note when you ask.

Mail, Messages and Notes each start switched off, and so do Calendar, Reminders, Contacts, Maps and Shortcuts. Each app has its own page here with what an assistant can and cannot do in it.

Mail · Messages · Notes

Is it safe to give an AI assistant access to iMessage?

Pomeroy reads Messages, the Mac app that holds your iMessage and text conversations, through the one file Messages keeps them in, which you hand it through a normal macOS file dialog. It keeps a read-only bookmark to that file and never asks for Full Disk Access. Pomeroy cannot send a message or a reply, so your assistant cannot either.

What your assistant reads becomes part of your conversation with it, the same as text you paste in, so ask about the messages you would be happy to paste. Switch Messages off in Pomeroy and the bookmark is all it loses. This is not Anthropic’s iMessage plugin for Claude Code, which needs Full Disk Access and can send replies; Pomeroy is a separate app that only reads.

How Messages access works · Privacy policy

What can Pomeroy not do?

Pomeroy cannot send mail or iMessages, and it never creates, edits or deletes a contact. That is by design: there is no action for any of those, so an assistant cannot be talked into it. Pomeroy never deletes anything in any app, either.

Your assistant can create events, reminders and notes, change an event or mark a reminder done, and run Shortcuts you already made. A shortcut you built yourself can do things Pomeroy will not do, like sending a message; that power is yours, set up in the Shortcuts app, and Pomeroy only starts the shortcut you name.

Every tool, and the six that write

Where does my data go?

Your app data stays on your Mac. Pomeroy reads your apps on your Mac and hands the result to the AI assistant that asked, which sends it to the company running the model as part of your conversation, the same as text you paste in. Nothing from your apps is sent to Pomeroy; there is no Pomeroy server and no Pomeroy account.

The only requests Pomeroy makes are a licence check when you enter a key, a signed update check you can switch off, and four pseudonymous usage counts that carry no content from your apps. That is the privacy pledge, and a test fails if the code and the pledge disagree.

What leaves your Mac · Privacy policy

Is Pomeroy made by Anthropic?

No. Pomeroy is an independent app made by Joe Saunderson, and Anthropic does not make, sell or support it. Pomeroy works with Anthropic’s Claude Desktop and Claude Code, and with assistants from other companies; each has its own plans and prices, and Pomeroy’s $19 is Pomeroy’s.

Questions about Pomeroy go to [e-mail], not to Anthropic. Questions about Claude itself go to Anthropic.

Does Pomeroy work with Cursor and Claude Code?

Yes. Pomeroy sets itself up in Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, Codex and LM Studio with one click, and writes a configuration for you to paste into Raycast, ChatWise, goose, Windsurf, Warp, Zed, Perplexity and JetBrains AI Assistant. Any other AI assistant on your Mac that can start a local MCP server works too, from the same configuration.

Each has a page on the main site with what Set up does, how to check it worked, and the configuration in full. Every app starts switched off whichever assistant asks, and the weekly allowance is one count per Mac, shared across all of them.

Every assistant Pomeroy works with · How an assistant reaches Pomeroy

Do I need Claude Desktop?

No. Claude Desktop is one of the assistants Pomeroy works with, not a requirement. If you have no AI assistant yet, Claude Desktop is free and a good first one; if you already use Claude Code, Cursor or another, Pomeroy sets itself up there instead.

Get Claude Desktop · Every assistant Pomeroy works with

Can I use Pomeroy from claude.ai or ChatGPT on the web?

No, and that is a decision rather than a gap. claude.ai, Cowork, ChatGPT on the web and Grok can only reach a server on the public internet, so connecting them would mean a relay carrying your mail, messages and calendar through a server that is not your Mac. Pomeroy’s pledge is that your app data leaves your Mac only in the answer to your own assistant, so Pomeroy runs no relay and there is no plan for one.

You may put your own tunnel in front of the local address. That is your Mac and your decision, Pomeroy neither helps nor blocks it, and it is worth knowing what it does not buy: reaching your Mac is the easy half, and signing in is the half that stops. ChatGPT cannot present a custom API key at all. Anthropic’s request-header path for custom connectors is a beta limited to some organisations, entered by an administrator as one credential shared across it. Grok documents no mechanism. So a tunnel does not deliver those three, and that is their limit rather than Pomeroy’s. Claude Desktop, Claude Code and the Codex side of the ChatGPT desktop app run on your Mac and work today.

Why cloud assistants cannot connect · Pomeroy vs Macuse

Does Pomeroy ask me to approve each assistant?

It depends which of the two ways in it uses. An assistant that talks to Pomeroy directly, through the extension or the pipe inside the app, is never prompted: it can only reach Pomeroy through a file your own macOS account owns, so anything that got there was already running on your Mac as you. An assistant that uses the local address can be prompted, and in one of the three modes it always is.

The local address is a listening port, and a connection to one carries no identity macOS will vouch for, so file permissions cannot guard it. That is what the modes are for. In Token mode Pomeroy writes one token into the settings of every assistant it can reach. In Approval mode there is no token to hand around: the assistant asks for itself, you answer in a Pomeroy window, and Deny is the button the Return key presses. Ask me before a new assistant connects adds a prompt to the other modes. Whatever the mode, the name on a row is what the assistant calls itself rather than a checked identity, and Pomeroy labels it that way.

What guards the endpoint

When do I need the local address?

Most assistants never do. Pomeroy’s usual way in starts a small program on this Mac, which is what Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code and most of the list use, and it needs no address and nothing secret. The local address is for an assistant that cannot start a program: one running in a container, or one that takes a URL and nothing else.

It is one address on this Mac, off until you switch it on, and it listens only to this Mac. Pomeroy writes it into the settings of every assistant it can reach, so you do not type it. Containers on Docker Desktop do reach it, and so do dev containers, because what arrives is a real connection from a process on the Mac. A virtual machine on its own subnet does not: the shared or NAT networking in UTM, Parallels and VMware Fusion puts the guest somewhere the address cannot be reached from, and that needs a forwarder you run.

How an assistant reaches Pomeroy

Can another computer reach Pomeroy?

Not on its own. The local address answers only on this Mac and refuses every other network interface, so nothing else on your network can reach it. There is no interface picker and no setting that widens it, and a test in Pomeroy’s own repository fails if that ever changes.

Pomeroy also embeds no tunnel and runs no relay, so nothing in the app can put your Mac on the internet. If you want that, you run your own tunnel in front of the address: your Mac, your decision, and your call on what it costs. Pomeroy publishes no recipes for it. The reason for the refusal is worth saying plainly. On this Mac the token guards a door only programs already running here can knock on. On a network interface that same token becomes the whole boundary against everyone on the network, carrying your mail and messages in the clear.

What can reach Pomeroy

Which Macs does Pomeroy run on?

Any Mac running macOS 15 or later. Pomeroy lives in the menu bar and keeps itself up to date with signed updates, which you can switch off in Settings. It is a Mac app only: there is no iPhone, iPad or Windows version.

How much does Pomeroy cost?

Pomeroy is free for 50 actions a week, with no account and no card. $19 once removes the weekly limit, and there is no subscription. If it is not for you, there is a 14-day refund for any reason.

One action is one use of one app: one Mail search, one look at your calendar, one reminder added. The count is per Mac and shared across every assistant you connect. When the week’s actions are used, nothing breaks: your assistant says so, and the count refills a week after it started. A licence covers one Mac at a time and includes updates to Pomeroy 1.

How the allowance works · Pricing

Can I use my licence on more than one Mac?

A Pomeroy licence covers one Mac at a time, and you can move it to a new Mac yourself. On the old Mac, open Pomeroy’s Settings, go to Licence and choose Deactivate this Mac; that frees the key. Then enter the same key on the new Mac and click Activate.

There is no limit on how often you move it, and no Pomeroy account to sign in to, because the key from your purchase email is the whole of it. If the old Mac is lost, sold or wiped and you cannot deactivate it, email [e-mail] and the key will be freed for you. Activating a second Mac while the first is still active is refused, and Pomeroy says which step to take.

Moving Macs and refunds

How is Pomeroy different from iMCP, Macuse and LMCP?

Pomeroy is the read-mostly one: your AI assistant can search and read your apps but cannot send mail or a message from them, and setup is one button with no Terminal. iMCP and LMCP are free; Macuse, like Pomeroy, is paid once. Each has an honest comparison page on the main site, with prices, app coverage and the date the facts were checked.

Compare all five

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Troubleshooting

Every failure mode, with the fix.