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Release NotesBehind the Scenes

Sonoma, Intel, and the Mac That Was Not Dead Yet

Agent! for Mac now runs on macOS Sonoma 14.6 and later, on Apple Silicon and Intel. A lot of you asked for a pre-macOS 26 version. Here it is.

By Todd Bruss · · 5 min read · 2 reads

Two happy Macs and a new sign An Intel Mac and an Apple Silicon Mac sit on a desk, both smiling. Between them, a sign has "macOS 26 only" crossed out, replaced by "macOS 14.6+, Apple Silicon and Intel." macOS 26 only macOS 14.6+ Apple Silicon and Intel Intel Mac Apple Silicon Mac
Same desk. Same Macs. New sign.

Let's be honest. When Agent! said "requires macOS 26," a lot of good Macs got left out.

If you're on Sonoma, you were out of luck. If you're on Sequoia, same thing. And if you're on an Intel Mac, you weren't even in the conversation.

That always bugged me. Those Macs still work. People use them every day. They write code on them, run their businesses on them, and keep way too many browser tabs open on them. They didn't do anything wrong. They just weren't on the newest OS.

Not anymore. Agent! for Mac now runs on macOS Sonoma 14.6 and later, on Apple Silicon and on Intel.

Many of you have been waiting for a pre-macOS 26 version. This one's for you.

Why it was 26-only in the first place

Agent! uses Apple's on-device model through a framework called FoundationModels. It isn't the main brain. Whatever provider you pick does the heavy lifting. But the on-device model helps with smaller jobs, like summarizing during context compaction, counting tokens, and warming up a session when the app launches.

Here's the catch. FoundationModels only exists on macOS 26. If your code even mentions one of its types, it won't build for an older Mac. The compiler just says no.

So the easy path was to require macOS 26 and move on. Easy for me, anyway. Not so great for everybody else.

And honestly, it was a little silly. The on-device model is a helper. It's nice to have. It was never the reason Agent! works. Locking out every older Mac over a helper is like refusing to cook dinner because you're out of parsley.

So how do you fix that?

You ask first. Before Agent! touches the on-device model, it checks: am I on macOS 26? If yes, great, use it. If no, that code just doesn't run, and your provider keeps doing the real work.

Ask before you use it A flow chart. Agent! wants the on-device model. It asks: is this macOS 26? Yes leads to using the on-device helpers. No leads to skipping them while the provider keeps working. Want the on-device model? macOS 26? Yes No Use it. Summaries, token counts Skip it. Your provider keeps working
That's the whole trick. Ask before you use it.

There's one more wrinkle. Swift won't let a class hold a property whose type doesn't exist on the running OS. So the session gets stored as a plain AnyObject and cast back only inside the macOS 26 code. Not pretty. Works great.

The commits

It all happened on September 27, 2026. Four commits, one day, and it's all in Git.

September 27, 2026, commit by commit A timeline from noon to 8 PM. Commit ea5ce624 at 12:46 PM, 4d7fca86 at 12:57 PM, 3a993205 at 7:14 PM, and 81079e2a at 7:32 PM. gate itea5ce62412:46 PM 12:57 PM4d7fca86bump packages docs3a9932057:14 PM 7:32 PM81079e2a1.1.76 noon4 PM8 PM
Commit times from Git, Eastern time.

ea5ce624: gate every use of FoundationModels behind macOS 26. That's the model service, the Apple Intelligence mediator, the launch prewarm in AgentApp, summaries and token counting in Compression.swift, and AboutSelf. On older systems it now just reports "requires macOS 26 or later" instead of refusing to build. No change at all if you're already on 26.

4d7fca86: bump all ten AgentiLoop Swift packages to releases that support macOS 14. AgentAccess, AgentAudit, AgentColorSyntax, AgentD1F, AgentEventBridges, AgentLLM, AgentMCP, AgentSwift, AgentTerminalNeo, AgentTools. All ten. This was the tedious part. You can't just change one number in Xcode and call it a day. Everything the app depends on has to come along for the ride. Same commit also caught that one token counting call needs macOS 26.4, not 26.0, so that check got tightened.

3a993205: docs. The README and FAQ now say Apple Silicon or Intel, macOS 14.6+. Two words, "or Intel." Took a while to earn them.

81079e2a: version 1.1.76, build 276, deployment target 14.6. Ship it.

That's it. No magic. Just #available checks, package bumps, and building it until it stopped yelling at me.

The fine print (the honest kind)

On Sonoma or Sequoia, you won't get the Apple Intelligence bits, because Apple doesn't ship them there. Agent! just works around them. You won't miss much. Your provider was doing the real work anyway.

An Intel Mac is still an Intel Mac. It'll run Agent! fine with a cloud provider. Big local models are another story. The FAQ already says 64GB+ for 30B local models, and that's true on any Mac, not just older ones.

And 14.6 is the floor. If your Mac can't run Sonoma, I can't help you there. I'm good, but I'm not that good.

Intel folks, this part's for you

I know a lot of you are holding on to Intel Macs because they still do the job. They're paid for. Your setup is dialed in. You know where everything is. You don't want to buy a new machine just to try an app.

Totally fair. You shouldn't have to.

Same goes for Apple Silicon people who just aren't ready to jump to macOS 26 yet. Maybe you're waiting for a point release. Maybe a tool you need isn't ready. Maybe you just don't feel like it. No judgment. Stay on Sonoma as long as you like.

Go grab it

Agent! for Mac. macOS Sonoma 14.6 and later. Apple Silicon and Intel.

If you've been waiting, the wait's over. Give it a spin and let me know how it runs on your machine. Especially you, Intel crowd. I want to hear about it.

Your Mac isn't dead yet. Turns out it just needed an invite.

Want the deep-dive version with code? Check out the engineering write-up.

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