NightBlood Remote was not a carefully planned or particularly well thought out product. It started as a fun experiment: could I give the latest voice models a face and a personality, inspired by some of the brilliant characters in my favourite books?

On the iPhone, that means an animated WebGL face, full-duplex WebRTC audio, local TrueDepth gaze input and a Lock Screen Live Activity. I have also included the Blender scripts I used to work out the original face design and its different listening, thinking, speaking and failure states.

This privacy-sanitised public source is iOS 1.8.2, build 28, including the setup and recovery fixes verified on two phones and in CarPlay. It contains no private Git history, developer-team identifier, provisioning profile, device identifier, host name, bearer token, account identifier, personal prompt text or sampled voice clip.

This update includes the CarPlay implementation introduced in build 23, with clearer connection errors, a Reconnect button, desktop transcript attachment, and smoother face rendering. The public build uses generic editable prompts, procedural chimes and a system terminal symbol for the intro. No private voice samples or vendor app icon are redistributed. See release notes.

CarPlay requires iOS 26.4 or later and Apple's approval for the Voice Based Conversation entitlement. A simulator build does not establish that approval.

Start with the step-by-step setup guide. It covers Apple signing, Mac Remote settings, ChatGPT sign-in, iPhone enrolment, pairing and selecting the Codex task. Agents should also read AGENTS.md.

Use the latest Codex desktop app approved for your Mac. The working setup was verified on desktop 26.908.70816, build 9275. Older desktop builds can pair successfully but fail transcript attachment with desktop_endpoint_missing. Update the desktop app first; updating only the Codex CLI is not sufficient. See desktop compatibility for the tested versions and managed-Mac guidance. Future desktop compatibility still needs verification because this integration uses private interfaces.

Check workspace Remote Control permission, this Mac's Remote setup and the selected task's permissions separately. Trusting the phone also does not enable Developer Mode: turn it on, restart and confirm it before installing. The guide and setup lessons record the required order, known fixes and the exact tested combinations.

16 September setup fix: earlier public builds stopped at sign-in because CODEX_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID was blank. The build now includes the public application identifier published in OpenAI's Codex source. It is not the creator's account credential. You sign into your own account; there is no personal client ID or API key to obtain for this route. Existing clones need to update, regenerate the Xcode project and rebuild, preserving their local signing settings as described in the guide.

Build 28 includes Pair another Mac recovery and preserves a healthy voice connection when opening Settings. A second physical iPhone with another OpenAI account completed pairing, audible voice, the correct Mac transcript and a successful physical CarPlay test using the existing developer team. Another Apple signing team and free Personal Team signing remain unverified. The direct Remote protocol and voice attestation are experimental and may reject a build or change upstream. Public availability of the client ID is not an assurance of OpenAI support for this third-party integration.

Optional Voice task creation and automation changes remain disabled by default. The direct route uses the desktop app's Remote connection; you do not start a separate App Server listener. The alternative standalone App Server WebSocket transport is still unimplemented. See Connections.

One further privacy point: App Server failure messages can include diagnostic details such as local paths, and those messages may travel through the Realtime service. Only use the experimental connection with a host whose diagnostic disclosure you are comfortable with.

The name is not subtle. Nightblood is the gloriously enthusiastic sword from Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere.

This is a fan-made tribute, not an official Cosmere product. The face, code and voice prompt are original project work, not a reproduction of the character, Sanderson's writing or anyone else's artwork.

My two-year-old son named the second face Marshmallow. That was the whole naming process. I have no notes.

This is also my first ever open-source project.

It started with a slightly odd question: could an AI companion feel less like a chat window and more like a small living presence? I am releasing it because I want to learn in public, improve the rough edges and see what other people make from the same starting point.

There will be rough edges. I believe that is traditional.

I built NightBlood Remote with help from both OpenAI Codex and Anthropic Claude. They contributed in different ways at different stages, alongside a fairly unreasonable amount of iteration from me.

I started the first NightBlood face in Blender. That was where I worked out the stage, lighting, eye shape, smoke, drift and the visual language for listening, thinking, speaking and failure.

Blender was the laboratory, not the final renderer. Once the face felt right, I translated the look into a live WebGL shader that could react at frame rate to gaze, voice amplitude and the state of the conversation on the phone.

That split turned out to be one of the most useful ideas in the project. Blender is where I discover and judge the character. The shipping app expresses the result as a small set of runtime parameters. The full route is in Face creation.

• Invent a genuinely different third face with its own movement grammar, not just NightBlood in a new colour.
• Build better bridges between Blender material and motion studies and runtime shader parameters.
• Add accessible alternatives for reduced motion, gaze tracking and audio-led animation.
• Implement the documented, authenticated Codex App Server transport without weakening the native/WebView credential boundary.
• Use the face with another voice or agent system by replacing the transport, while keeping camera processing local and permissions explicit.

• A SwiftUI portrait app, Live Activity extension and native CarPlay surface.
• CarPlay connection and error states, Reconnect, and an intro image that switches to the face on Talk.
• Desktop transcript attachment and rendering/startup performance improvements.
• Secure Enclave P-256 device identity and a Face ID session gate.
• Device-only Keychain storage for tokens and pairing metadata.
• WebRTC microphone and speaker handling in a media-only WKWebView on the phone and native WebRTC in CarPlay.
• Two live WebGL faces with gaze, state, colour and amplitude animation.
• Generic procedural startup chimes with no third-party audio samples.
• Blender 5.2 scene-generation and rendering scripts.
• Unit tests for prompt, lifecycle, routing and heartbeat behaviour.
• A repeatable local privacy and secret scan.

• macOS with Xcode 26, or a compatible version supporting Swift 6 and iOS 18.
• XcodeGen 2.45 or later.
• Node.js 20.19 or later (or 22.12 or later) and npm.
• A physical Face ID iPhone for Secure Enclave, DeviceCheck, TrueDepth and real microphone and speaker testing.
• Developer Mode enabled on that iPhone for installation through Xcode. Enable it, restart and confirm Turn On as described in Setup.
• For the experimental direct connection: Codex access and Remote Control enabled for the same account/workspace on the Mac and phone. Managed workspaces may require an administrator to enable Remote Control separately. Complete the Mac's Remote setup before phone enrolment; see Setup.
• A current Codex desktop app; see the tested desktop version.
• Blender 5.2 or later, but only if you want to regenerate the design studies.

npm --prefix app/ui ci
make ios-project
open ios/NightBloodRemote/NightBloodRemote.xcodeproj

Choose the NightBloodRemote scheme and an iPhone Simulator.

The Simulator is useful for the faces, layout and deterministic lifecycle work. It cannot prove Secure Enclave, Face ID, DeviceCheck, TrueDepth or real two-way audio.

The generated .xcodeproj is deliberately ignored so that local Apple team and signing data do not wander into a commit.

1. Follow Setup and read Security.
2. Generate the project, then set your own bundle identifiers and Apple team for the app and Live Activity extension in the ignored Xcode project.
3. Choose CarPlay or phone-only before installing. CarPlay is enabled in the project by default, but Apple must approve the capability for your team/app. Enable it on your explicit App ID and use a development profile that includes the entitlement and the target phone. Follow the CarPlay signing steps. If you choose the documented phone-only build instead, NightBlood will work on the phone but will not appear in CarPlay.
4. Keep the included public OAuth client configuration. Sign in to your own ChatGPT account on both devices.
5. Leave NIGHTBLOOD_ENABLE_VOICE_AUTOMATIONS set to NO unless you have reviewed and accepted the bounded host changes described in Connections.
6. Leave NIGHTBLOOD_ENABLE_VOICE_TASK_CREATION set to NO unless you have reviewed and accepted persistent task creation with inherited permissions.
7. Build and inspect the signing summary before installing. Regeneration replaces local Xcode edits; record and reapply them before another build.

The public snapshot removes every value that identified the original Apple developer, iPhone, Mac, Codex account, task or saved project. A fork therefore needs its own local configuration.

The Simulator can render both faces but cannot establish physical-device enrolment or voice. A missing-client-ID error means the app was built from old or overridden configuration; follow the upgrade steps. Never copy account tokens, pairing state or private keys from another build.

After changing a fork, run:

npm --prefix app/ui ci
npm --prefix app/ui run typecheck
make audit
make simulator-build

If the face resource is missing, run npm --prefix app/ui run build:ios-direct and regenerate the Xcode project.

If signing fails, inspect only your local bundle IDs, team and profiles. If a real connection fails, use the staged diagnosis in Connections. Do not weaken the native/WebView boundary, add a LAN listener or retry a pairing change when the outcome is uncertain.

Enabling NIGHTBLOOD_ENABLE_VOICE_TASK_CREATION lets the Realtime model ask the paired host to create persistent local tasks using its existing workspace and permission context.

Enabling Voice automations also permits the app to create or delete its own heartbeat files on the paired host. Neither operation gets a separate Face ID prompt after the session has started. Read the full bounded-authority section in Connections before enabling either feature.

• Connect your Mac and iPhone
• Instructions for setup agents
• Architecture
• Every connection and trust boundary
• Create and adapt the faces with Blender and WebGL
• Privacy behaviour
• Security policy and limitations
• What was removed or sanitised
• Pre-publication audit checklist

make audit
make web
make ios-project
make simulator-build
make test-build

make audit is intentionally conservative. Review every exception yourself. A passing script is useful evidence, not proof that a release is safe.

make test-build proves that the test target compiles without starting a device. To run the tests, first boot a Simulator you have chosen and then use its exact name:

xcrun simctl list devices available
make simulator-test SIMULATOR='iPhone 17 Pro'

Simulator tests do not replace a physical-device pass for Face ID, Secure Enclave, DeviceCheck, TrueDepth, background audio or real WebRTC media.

The code, original scripts, procedural chimes and included original visual assets are available under the MIT Licence. See LICENSE and NOTICE.

OpenAI, ChatGPT and Codex are trademarks of OpenAI. This project is independent and is not endorsed by OpenAI.

Please review the project and character names before a public launch. The licence does not grant rights in anyone else's marks, however enthusiastic the sword may be.