PLATE 16FAQ
Frequently asked questions
If your question is not here, the docs are more detailed, and contact goes to a person.
PLATE 16FAQ
Questions people actually ask.
- 01What is Osmium Coder?
- A native desktop agent IDE for Mac, Windows, and Linux. You open a folder, and an agent reads and edits it while you keep or discard each change. It includes a Monaco editor, a real terminal, git, a debugger, ripgrep search, and MCP support in one window.
- 02Is it really free?
- Yes, for local models. The full IDE and the Agent, Plan, Ask, Analyze, and Debug modes work with models running on your own machine, with no API key, no card, and no usage metering. You create a free account with an email code to download. You only pay if you want frontier cloud models or the heavier Architect, Arena, and Fleet modes.
- 03Which local models can I run?
- Anything Ollama or LM Studio can serve, plus local GGUF files through llama.cpp. Osmium ships a curated catalog of 16 models with real VRAM figures, from Qwen2.5 Coder 1.5B at about 2 GB up to Llama 3.3 70B at about 40 GB, and it reads your hardware to tell you which ones fit before you download anything.
- 04What hardware do I need?
- A 4 GB GPU is enough to run Qwen2.5 Coder 1.5B or 3B. Around 8 GB gets you Qwen2.5 Coder 7B, which is the model most people should start with. Apple Silicon works well because unified memory counts as usable VRAM. Osmium rates every model as fitting, tight, or too big for your specific machine.
- 05Does my code leave my computer?
- Not when you use a local model. The prompt, the context, the generation, and the edit all happen on your hardware, and Osmium works with no network connection at all. If you choose a cloud model, then your prompt and attached context go to that provider — which is why the choice is explicit.
- 06Do I have to paste an API key?
- No. There is no API key field anywhere in the product. Local models do not need one. Cloud models are proxied for you, or configured by an administrator. If a cloud model has no key behind it, the app tells you to ask an admin rather than showing you a paste box.
- 07How is this different from Cursor, Copilot, or Devin?
- Those require their cloud to work at all, and bill per seat or per task. Osmium's core loop runs on a GPU you already own, for free, and the agent writes directly to your working tree instead of a hosted sandbox. We do not claim unattended multi-hour runs or zero errors.
- 08What do the paid plans add?
- Starter at $49 and Plus at $89 add frontier cloud models — Claude, ChatGPT, Grok, Gemini, DeepSeek, and Composer — with an included monthly usage grant, proxied so you never handle keys. Plus is more included usage, not more tools. Pro at $140 permanently unlocks Architect mode, Model Arena, and Autopilot Fleet.
- 09Can I use it offline?
- Yes. Once a local model is pulled, the editor, terminal, git, debugger, and agent all work with no connection. Your sessions and history live in a local SQLite database on your machine.
- 10Who sells this and can I cancel?
- Zenguard Private Limited, billed through Razorpay on osmiumhq.com. Subscriptions can be cancelled at any time, and yearly plans receive a prorated refund for unused months where applicable. The free tier needs no payment method at all.