Skip to main content
Pomeroy cannot connect to an assistant that runs in someone else’s cloud. That is a decision rather than a gap, and there is no plan to change it.

​
Pomeroy has an HTTP endpoint. This is still true.

That is the part worth being precise about, because the endpoint sounds like it should change the answer. The endpoint binds to loopback only: 127.0.0.1, this Mac’s own address, which no other machine can route to. It is not bound to your Wi-Fi address, it is not bound to 0.0.0.0, and there is no port forwarded to it. A cloud-hosted assistant’s MCP client runs on its vendor’s servers. To reach a tool it has to make a request to a public address. Pomeroy does not have one, and the endpoint’s binding is the reason rather than an accident of configuration.

​
Assistants this rules out

  • claude.ai in a browser, and Claude in the cloud
  • ChatGPT on the web
  • Grok
  • Any assistant whose tool calls originate from a vendor’s servers

​
What to use instead

The desktop equivalents run on your Mac, so they can. In most cases the same account and the same models.

Claude Desktop

Instead of claude.ai. Free, and the shortest setup Pomeroy has.

Codex

Instead of ChatGPT on the web. Reaches the ChatGPT desktop app too.

Perplexity for Mac

Instead of perplexity.ai in a tab.

LM Studio

Or skip the cloud entirely and run the model on your Mac.

​
Could you tunnel it yourself?

Technically, yes. A tunnel from a public address to 127.0.0.1:13579 would work, and nothing in Pomeroy tries to detect one or stop you. Be clear about what it costs before you do. You would be putting a public door in front of your mail, your messages and your calendar, guarded by one token, on a machine that has no other inbound exposure. The endpoint’s threat model assumes an attacker already has code running as you on this Mac, which is a much smaller assumption than assuming the whole internet can knock. If you do it anyway, use Approval mode rather than Token, and treat the tunnel’s own authentication as the real gate.

​
Some competitors ship this as a feature

They do, usually as an opt-in relay: the app opens a tunnel to a public address so a cloud assistant can reach it. It is a real feature solving a real problem. Pomeroy declines to build it because the account on what leaves your Mac depends on there being no inbound door from outside this machine. A shipped relay would make that page much harder to write honestly, and impossible to hold to a test. How Pomeroy compares to the alternatives