Pace vs Samuel

Choosing between Pace and Samuel?

Samuel runs in the cloud, and it's open source under a MIT license. It calls itself "Voice-first AI companion — wake-word activated, sees screen, hears system audio, writes plugins.".

Where Pace differs: Samuel's self-modifying plugin system and system-audio listening are genuinely novel — Pace has neither. But Samuel is fully cloud (OpenAI APIs). Pace is fully on-device. The plugin auto-repair loop is the most interesting idea here.

The full breakdown is below — what Samuel is genuinely good at, its stack, and the honest line on where Pace diverges, including where Pace is behind. For the whole field in one place, see every macOS voice agent compared.

Samuel

github.com/sambuild04/screen-voice-agent

Voice-first AI companion — wake-word activated, sees screen, hears system audio, writes plugins. — sambuild04

STT · OpenAI Realtime API Reasoner · OpenAI Realtime API + GPT-5.5 (plugin generation) + GPT-4o Vision TTS · OpenAI Realtime API Screen · yes

What it's good at

  • Self-modifying — writes and hot-loads its own plugins at runtime using GPT-5.5.
  • Auto-repair — detects plugin failures and patches code automatically (up to 2 attempts).
  • Hears system audio via ScreenCaptureKit with PID-level filtering, not just microphone.

Where Pace differs

Samuel's self-modifying plugin system and system-audio listening are genuinely novel — Pace has neither. But Samuel is fully cloud (OpenAI APIs). Pace is fully on-device. The plugin auto-repair loop is the most interesting idea here.

Rechecked June 2026.
If Samuel shipped something I missed or got cheaper since, email me and I'll update this page.

Pace is $29 once, fully on-device, and free to try on Apple Intelligence.

Get Pace

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