open-computer-use vs Scalaris Atlas

open-computer-use is a free, MIT-licensed local MCP server that lets AI agents inspect and operate desktop applications through accessibility interfaces. Its nine core tools cover app discovery, accessibility-tree and screenshot capture, clicking, scrolling, dragging, typing, key presses, secondary actions, and control-value changes. The project says it runs entirely on the user’s machine and uses the accessibility layer for core app actions without taking over the physical mouse and keyboard. Setup documentation covers Codex CLI and App, Claude Code, Gemini CLI, and opencode, with manual configuration for other MCP clients. A ZCode plugin installs the skill and connects an MCP server. macOS 14 or later requires Accessibility and Screen Recording permissions. Windows and Linux use a signed-in desktop session, and Linux requires AT-SPI2. Additional window-level tools are currently available on Windows, while macOS and Linux support is in progress. Password managers are refused; app launching, focus changes, and global input injection require explicit environment-variable gates. The project warns that high-privilege automation should be used only on authorized machines.

Scalaris Atlas is a local deployment that turns a computer into a private host for AI models and serves them to compatible clients. It accepts OpenAI-compatible clients at localhost and exposes routes for chat completions, embeddings, and model lists. Atlas includes Pulsar, while its model manager lets users install their own models. The API covers a strict subset of the OpenAI HTTP surface; unimplemented endpoints return a typed 501 response. Models are served locally, and the maker says nothing leaves the machine. Egress is denied by default, and non-loopback binds are refused unless explicitly enabled. Atlas has no telemetry or phone-home behavior, according to the maker. Scalaris Toolbox installs and supervises it. Configuration is kept in one TOML file and reloads when changed. GPU exhaustion can trigger CPU fallback only with --allow-cpu. It is free forever at free and runs on macOS, Linux, and Windows.