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The built-in summaries run on Apple Intelligence, so you need an Apple Silicon Mac on macOS 26 with Apple Intelligence turned on in System Settings — and the on-device model has to finish downloading the first time, which can take a while on a slow connection. Recaps also need a few entries to draw from, so a brand-new journal won't have enough yet. If you'd rather not rely on the built-in model, connect your own Claude, OpenAI, or Gemini key under Settings → Connections and Nisshi will use that instead.

Because they run entirely on your Mac. Apple's on-device model is deliberately small and private — it never sends your journal anywhere — which trades some raw power for that privacy. For longer, sharper drafts like STAR stories and full performance reviews, connect your own Claude, OpenAI, or Gemini key in Settings → Connections; Nisshi will use that stronger model while keeping everything else local.

The on-device model has real limits: it can only hold so much text at once, it's smaller than cloud models, and it occasionally plays it safe or declines on certain content. Try generating again, narrow the date range so there's less to work through, or connect your own AI key for longer and more detailed output.

The private, on-device summaries — recaps, STAR stories, and review drafts — are built on Apple's Foundation Models, the on-device AI framework Apple first opened to apps in macOS 26 (Tahoe). On earlier versions that framework simply doesn't exist, so there'd be no way to run the intelligence on your Mac without sending your journal to a cloud service. macOS 26 is the floor that lets everything stay local.

No. Journaling, tasks, goals, meetings, and search all work fully offline. The only thing that needs a connection is drafting summaries through your own cloud AI provider — and even that is skipped when you use Apple's on-device models.

No. Nisshi is a Mac app and your journal stays in one local database on that Mac — there's no account and no cloud sync. To carry your history to another Mac, export a backup and restore it there.

Everything lives in a local database on your Mac, so you move it deliberately. Open Settings → Backup & Restore and choose Export All Data to save a single file with every entry, meeting, and goal. Keep it wherever you like — Time Machine, iCloud Drive, a USB drive — then use Restore from Backup on the new Mac. Restore merges in, so nothing already there is overwritten.

Yes — no account, no subscription. If you connect your own AI provider key, that provider may bill you for its own usage, but Nisshi itself charges nothing and has no servers.

Settings → Data has an erase option that permanently removes every entry, meeting, goal, person, task, and document from your Mac and wipes any saved provider keys from the Keychain. It can't be undone, so export a backup first if you might want your history later.