Sidecar is a premium, open-source, local-first interview cheat-sheet & hack overlay designed to help software engineers and tech candidates crush live technical and behavioral loops.
It runs silently in the background, captures dual-channel call audio, crops screen regions (for LeetCode/HackerRank questions), and streams context-grounded AI suggestions into a transparent overlay that floats invisibly over Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams.
No expensive subscriptions, no cloud databases, and completely private—bring your own API keys and run your interview assistant locally for pennies.
- 🎧 Dual-Channel Live Audio Capture: Native loopback hooks into both your microphone (input) and the interviewer's voice (output) to transcribe conversations instantly and identify who is speaking.
- 📋 Zero-Hallucination Resume Grounding: Upload your resume to build a local background context. Sidecar retrieves real STAR method stories from your actual history, ensuring the copilot never invents fake metrics or roles.
- 👁️ Visual Code Solver (Vision Routing): Drag a capture box over live coding questions (LeetCode, HackerRank, system architecture slides). Multimodal vision models parse the context to solve the problem in real-time.
- ⏱️ Auto-Answer Cheat Mode: Armed background detectors scan meeting transcripts for questions directed at you and trigger prompt answers automatically—fully debounced and rate-limited to protect your API budget.
- 👀 Eye-Contact Friendly UX: Crafted to output suggestions in 3–5 bullet points (each about 7 words) so you can scan answers naturally without looking away from your camera.
- 🕵️ Task Manager & Alt+Tab Invisibility: Native Win32 window style manipulation strips
WS_EX_APPWINDOWand enforcesWS_EX_TOOLWINDOW. This makes the overlay 100% invisible in the primary Task Manager "Apps" list and the Alt+Tab menu, running it stealthily as a background process. - 🔒 Native OS Encryption: Your provider API keys (OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, etc.) are encrypted directly using your native operating system keychain (DPAPI on Windows, Keychain on macOS).
| Provider | Chat Models | Vision Capabilities | Transcription | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ✅ Batch & Streaming | Whisper-1 for batch, Realtime models for streaming |
| Google Gemini | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ✅ Batch | Full multimodal capability across models |
| Anthropic Claude | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | — | Uses prompt caching to keep profile token costs low |
| TokenRouter | ✅ Yes | Model Dependent | — | Smart fallback routing across models |
| Custom (OpenAI-compatible) | ✅ Yes | Model Dependent | ✅ Yes | Support for Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM, OpenRouter |
| Deepgram | — | — | ✅ Streaming STT | Supports code-switched and multi-language speech |
| AssemblyAI | — | — | ✅ Streaming STT | Premium English-first streaming adapter |
Download the prebuilt installer directly from the Releases page. It installs as AudioEngineCore.exe in your AppData folder with automated shortcuts.
Requires Node.js v20+ and npm.
- Clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/sohan-a11y/sidecar.git cd sidecar - Install dependencies:
npm install
- Build the production bundle:
npm run build
- Start the Electron application:
npm start
Once the app launches, click the Settings gear in the composer panel:
- API Keys: Add your chat provider keys (OpenAI, Gemini, Anthropic, or Local server details).
- Speech Settings: Choose your transcription engine. Standard chat keys handle batch STT, while streaming engines (Deepgram/AssemblyAI) require their respective keys.
- Context Profile: Paste your resume/details and hit Build Profile to populate the story retriever.
- Active Session: Enter target role, company name, and job description to ground conversation answers in the current context.
| Action | Default Shortcut | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Assist | Ctrl / Cmd + Enter |
Triggers a standard prompt generation |
| Solve Code | Ctrl / Cmd + H |
Grabs a screenshot of the active window and solves code |
| Start Listening | Ctrl / Cmd + G |
Activates live audio capture and streams transcript |
| Toggle Overlay | Ctrl / Cmd + Shift + H |
Instantly shows or hides the transparent overlay |
| Quit App | Ctrl / Cmd + Shift + X |
Cleanly exits the background process |
Shortcuts can be customized in Settings under the Shortcuts tab.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Renderer (React) │
│ App.jsx · transcript pane · settings · VAD segmenter │
└───────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────┘
│ IPC only (contextIsolation on, no node in renderer)
┌───────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Main (Electron) │
│ │
│ MediaCapture ──▶ TranscriptionService ──▶ stt/ adapters │
│ │ (ws sockets) │
│ ▼ │
│ SessionManager ◀── ContextStore │
│ │ │ │
│ ▼ ▼ │
│ QuestionDetector ──▶ PromptBuilder ──▶ LlmService │
│ │ │ │
│ AutoAnswer RateLimiter │
│ ▼ │
│ providers/ adapters │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.