caezium/burrow

🐹 Cleanup, app management, maintenance, disk analysis, and live status in one free, open-source, native Mac app + extensive support for AI agents.

Burrow – a native system‑care app with an AI‑agent interface

What it is

A free, open‑source desktop application for macOS (stable) and Windows (preview) that bundles a small Rust engine (burrow‑engine).
It provides the usual “clean‑up” toolbox you see in commercial Mac utilities: junk‑file removal, dev‑artifact purging, leftover installer sweeping, app uninstall (with leftover files), safe maintenance (cache rebuild, DNS flush, Dock/Finder restart), disk‑usage treemap, and a live system‑status dashboard.

Why it mentions AI

Burrow runs a MCP (Machine‑Control‑Protocol) server – a JSON‑RPC / optional HTTP endpoint that exposes the same commands the bundled CLI (mo) offers. This lets external AI agents (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, Codex) query the machine’s recent metrics and, with user consent, invoke actions such as cleaning or uninstalling.
The UI also shows a “Explain with AI” view where a language model can turn a snapshot of the system into plain‑language description.

Key features (macOS)

Feature	Description
Status dashboard	Real‑time sparklines for CPU, memory, GPU, disk I/O, network, battery and a health score.
History	SQLite store keeps metric data for 5 days → 90 days; charts let you see trends over time.
Clean / Purge	Scans caches, logs, `node_modules`, `target/`, `__pycache__`, etc.; shows a dry‑run preview, then moves files to the Trash (recoverable).
Installers	Finds leftover `.dmg`/`.pkg` files and removes them safely.
Optimize	One‑click maintenance: rebuild caches, repair metadata, flush DNS, restart Dock/Finder.
Software manager	Lists installed apps (size, source), supports multi‑select uninstall, and shows Homebrew updates.
Analyze	Squarified treemap visualising disk usage; drill‑down to any folder.
MCP / Agent API	`burrow mcp` (stdio JSON‑RPC) and optional localhost HTTP API expose status, metrics, and tool commands for AI agents.
Menu‑bar HUD	Small overlay in the macOS menu bar showing health, top processes and job status.
Signed updates	macOS builds are Developer‑ID signed and notarized; updates are delivered via Sparkle with Ed25519‑signed feed.

Windows preview

How it works under the hood

The UI (SwiftUI on macOS, WinUI 3 on Windows) talks to the bundled burrow‑engine binary, which is a Rust program licensed under the Functional Source License (FSL‑1.1‑ALv2). The engine’s command line mirrors the open‑source mo CLI from the Mole project, so the same flags (mo clean, mo status --json, etc.) are used.
For source builds you can replace the bundled engine with an external mo binary.
Metric collection runs mo status --json at a configurable interval (default every few seconds) and stores results in a local SQLite DB.
The MCP server runs as a child process exposing JSON‑RPC over stdio and optionally over a loopback HTTP port, allowing any client—including LLM‑backed agents—to query or invoke the tools.

Installation

macOS: brew install --cask caezium/tap/burrow (official signed release).
Windows: download the latest zip/exe from the GitHub releases page or build from the windows/ folder.

Who might use it

Power users who want a single native app for routine Mac/Windows maintenance.
Developers building AI‑assistant workflows that need to query system health or trigger clean‑up actions programmatically.
Anyone who prefers an open‑source alternative to commercial cleaners like CleanMyMac.

Limitations / roadmap

Windows version is still a preview; some clean‑up commands are placeholders until Mole’s Windows CLI stabilises.
The bundled engine is under a source‑available FSL license, not a permissive OSS license.
Future plans include a “run‑all” Tune‑Up routine, deeper/faster disk analysis, and hardening of supply‑chain and data‑loss safeguards.

All details above are taken directly from the repository’s README; no additional features have been inferred.