Nicky Molina

Aside

A glass overlay that listens to client calls and suggests short, cited answers from your company docs.

Role
Builder
With
Built for IDG, which owns it
When
2026 Age 17
Status
Built and tested. Not downloadable yet.
Visit site aside.nickymolina.com (opens in a new tab)

What I did

  • Kept audio on the Mac. Speech turns into text on the device, and only the text goes to the AI.
  • Let people bring their own AI: their Claude Code or Codex plan, or Claude credits with a monthly cap.
  • Cut every outside network call, including analytics and auto-update, and added tests that fail if one comes back.
  • Calls are wiped when they end unless you choose to keep them, and the overlay is hidden from screen share.
  • Ran a clean-room rewrite to get Aside out from under an open-source license that would have forced its code public.

Results

  • 28 merged pull requests in 18 days, all directed by me
  • 396 of 396 tests passing

As of October 26, 2026

The Aside site, with an example call and a suggested answer in the overlay

What was hard

The license. Aside started as a copy of an open-source app under AGPL, which would have made Aside open source too. To get out, one person wrote down what the old code did, and builders who had never seen it rebuilt the app from those notes.

I still haven't run Aside on a real call with a network monitor to prove nothing leaves the Mac. That's the next check.

All work