Merlin
An assistant that pays attention — even when you're not asking.
Most assistants wait. You type, they reply, the moment passes. Merlin stays on. It learns what you like, watches what matters, and quietly handles the things you'd rather not think about.
Runs on the Claude subscription you already have. No API keys. No per-token bills.
On the Claude you already have
You may have seen agent frameworks like openclaw. They're powerful, but they plug into the Claude API — separate account, pay per token, a bill that scales with how much your agent does.
Merlin works the other way around. It runs through Anthropic's official Claude environment on the subscription you already use in your browser. Sign in once, and Merlin works through your account.
- No API key to manage. No per-token billing.
- No new account. Same Claude, just always on.
- Flat monthly cost — built for an assistant that runs continuously.
If you'd rather pay by usage, Merlin will use an API key too. But the subscription path is the one it was designed for.
What Merlin does
- Keeps an eye on your inbox. The urgent things find your phone the moment they arrive. Receipts, newsletters, and the routine noise get sorted and out of the way before you sit down.
- Manages your calendar. "Put Alice on for Tuesday at 2." Done. Move it, decline a conflict, send the invite — Merlin handles the rest.
- Books your table. Mention the place and the night. If a window opens up, Merlin grabs it.
- Brings you the morning. A quiet brief with today's calendar, your tasks, the weather, and the headlines you'd care about — waiting for you before you're out of bed.
- Knows your taste. Recommends restaurants by what you actually like and where you are, not what's popular this week.
- Watches the world for you. A flight you've been pricing drops. Tickets to a show you'd want. A friend's birthday is in a week. The follow-up call you meant to schedule. You'll hear about it at the right moment, from the right direction.
- Helps with the rest. "Write that no for me." "Summarize this." "Plan a long weekend in Lisbon under two thousand." Describe what you need; Merlin does the work.
- Stays close. A companion app on your phone keeps the conversation going. Reply with 👍 to confirm, or "skip" to teach Merlin what not to bring up again.
What makes Merlin different
Five things most AI assistants miss.
🧠 It remembers you
Your preferences, your decisions, the things you said last month — Merlin keeps them. The longer you use it, the more it understands what you actually want, not what most people might want.
🐝 It reaches out
When Merlin notices something worth knowing — a flight delay, a calendar conflict, a chance to catch a show you'd love — it tells you. Quietly. At the right moment. When there's nothing useful to say, it stays quiet. (No spam. No "did you know…" pings. Just signal.)
🛠️ It gets things done
It doesn't just suggest. It writes the email, books the dinner, sets the reminder, runs the research. With safety rails for the things that matter — no money moves, no commitments made on your behalf — without you saying yes first.
⏰ It shows up on time
Recurring work happens on schedule, in the background. Morning briefs, weekly recaps, the things you'd otherwise have to remember. You don't have to. Merlin does.
📈 It gets better as you live with it
Every week, Merlin reviews how it did. Were its messages useful? Did they land at the right time? It learns from how you respond — promotes what works, drops what doesn't, and gradually shapes itself to fit your life.
Why we built it
A real assistant remembers what matters, notices what's worth noticing, takes action when it can, and learns as it goes.
Chatbots do none of those. Merlin does all four — and that's the difference between a search box that can talk and an assistant that can actually help.
It runs on your hardware. It works with your accounts. The integrations are deliberately spare — you wire your own email, calendar, smart home — because your assistant should know about your life, not someone else's.
Under the hood
For the curious. Merlin is built on Claude Code with persistent claude -p supervisors, durable session resume, an MCP shell bridge that turns any CLI into an agent tool, a SQLite memory layer with full-text + embedding search, a local Ollama model handling latency-sensitive acknowledgments, and markdown playbooks describing every scheduled job. Read the architecture: github.com/mraccah2/merlin/blob/main/system/architecture.md.