Intelligent Internet's Genii Texts You First as an Open-Source iMessage AI
Intelligent Internet launches Genii, an open-source AI assistant that lives inside iMessage and proactively texts you first when something needs your attention.
- Genii launched: Intelligent Internet releases an open-source personal AI assistant that lives as an iMessage contact -- no app download required.
- Proactive by design: Genii texts you first when something needs attention (flight check-in, PR review, calendar conflicts) rather than waiting to be asked.
- Persistent memory: Context never resets between sessions; the assistant runs background "dreaming" to consolidate and connect information across conversations.
- Six integrations out of the box: Gmail, Google Calendar, Slack, GitHub, Google Drive, and Google Maps, all with write-action approval gates.
- Fully open source (Apache 2.0): Self-hostable with your own OpenAI API key and E2B sandbox account; GitHub repo here.
- Built on II-Agent: Long-running tasks are delegated to Intelligent Internet's existing open-source agent framework, with results returned directly to the chat thread.
Most AI assistants sit inside a browser tab, waiting for you to remember they exist. Every session starts from zero, you carry the context, and you have to go find them. Genii, from Intelligent Internet, works the other way around. It lives as a contact in your iMessage, remembers everything you've told it, and texts you first when something needs attention.
A contact, not an app
Setup is deliberately frictionless. No app to download, no account to create. Enter your phone number, wait a few minutes, and a new contact appears in iMessage. From that point, you interact with it exactly like texting a friend.
The hosted version is live at genii.ii.inc, with iMessage first and more surfaces on the way. Genii runs inside iMessage through the Linq app, a service that lets software send and receive iMessages programmatically. Pricing hasn't been announced, but the full codebase is open source under Apache 2.0, so you can self-host it for the cost of your own API keys.
Six things it can actually do
Genii is built around six core capabilities:
- Initiative: Genii watches the streams you've connected and acts on what it finds: the flight open for check-in, the pull request waiting on review, the promise you made in passing three days ago. When something needs you, it texts you first.
- Persistent memory: Every conversation becomes memory: names, preferences, decisions, the way you like things done. During idle hours it runs a background consolidation process the team calls "dreaming," connecting the note from March to the plan you made last night and pruning what stopped mattering.