How to use CSuite.
A friendly, end-to-end guide to the app — from installing it the first time, to generating your first image, to chaining models into a multi-step workflow. No prior AI experience needed.
Get started
Install & setup
CSuite is a native desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux. It runs entirely on your computer — there is no website to log into, no account to create, and nothing to install in your browser.
.dmg; on Windows an .exe installer; on Linux an AppImage.The app layout
CSuite has a single window with three main areas:
- The menu — the strip of icons down the left side. The CSuite mark at the top opens the Dashboard (recent files and quick actions); below it sit the four modalities (text, image, audio, video), then Chat and Workflows, and finally Models and Account. Hover an icon to see its label.
- The sidebar — the list of files in your current modality. For example, in the Image workspace it shows every image in your project folder with a small thumbnail and filename.
- The main panel — where you preview, edit and generate content. A model picker, settings, and prompt sit alongside the preview so you can iterate without leaving the workspace.
Each workspace is built around the same idea: pick a model on the right, type a prompt, and the result lands in your project folder and shows up in the sidebar.
Your project folder
The project folder is the heart of CSuite. Everything you generate or edit is saved there as a real file you can open in Finder, File Explorer, or any other app.
- Files are organised by type — text, images, audio, video.
- You can drop existing files into the folder from outside the app and they’ll appear in the sidebar instantly.
- Switching to a different folder gives you a clean workspace — great for keeping client projects separate.
- Right-click any file in the sidebar to reveal it in your operating system’s file manager, rename it, duplicate it, or delete it.
- Select a file and press
DeleteorBackspaceto remove it — the app shows a confirm dialog first so you can’t lose work by accident.
Models
AI model providers
An AI model is the engine that does the actual generating. CSuite lets you choose from two kinds of providers:
Cloud providers
Cloud providers (like Replicate, Runware, OpenAI, Anthropic and Google) run powerful models on their own servers. CSuite talks to them directly using your own API key — your prompts never pass through us.
Local providers
Local providers run open-weight models directly on your computer. Once a model is downloaded you can use it offline, with no per-request cost, and nothing leaves your machine. CSuite supports two runtimes:
- Ollama — the easiest way to run text models like Gemma, Llama, Mistral and Qwen. CSuite can either bundle Ollama for you or use an existing Ollama install you already have.
- HuggingFace runtime — runs ONNX-exported open models. CSuite installs the runtime for you on first use.
How well a local model performs depends on your computer’s memory and (on Macs) your Apple silicon chip. CSuite will warn you if a model needs more RAM than your machine has.
The Models screen
Click the Models icon in the menu to see every model available to you, grouped by provider. From here you can:
- Browse the catalog of local models that you can download. Each row shows the model size, what it’s good at, and whether your computer can run it.
- Download a local model — click Pull and watch the progress bar. You can keep using the rest of the app while it downloads.
- See which models are already installed and how much disk space they’re using.
- Hide models you don’t want cluttering up the picker when you’re generating content.
- Delete models you no longer need to free up disk space.
Create
Working with text
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The text workspace is a rich-text editor for drafting, rewriting and brainstorming with AI assistance. It opens plain text, Markdown and HTML files.
Generating text
Inline editing tools
Select any piece of text and a small toolbar appears with quick AI actions:
- Rewrite — rephrase the selection.
- Continue — keep writing from where the cursor is.
- Shorter / Longer — tighten or expand the selection.
- More formal / Casual — change the tone.
- Fix grammar — clean up typos and grammar.
Inline images and ghost suggestions
You can ask the model to generate an image right inside a document — it appears inline and is saved alongside the text. When you pause typing, the editor can also suggest a few words ahead in faint grey; press Tab to accept.
Working with images
The image workspace is built around a thumbnail grid sidebar and a large preview panel.
Generating an image
Editing images
- Crop — drag a rectangle in the preview to crop. Choose Replace to overwrite the file or Save as new to keep both.
- Resize — pick a width and height. CSuite uses high-quality resampling under the hood.
- Img2img — pick a different image model and give it a new prompt with the current image as the reference.
Working with audio
The audio workspace handles voice, music and sound effects. It opens MP3, WAV, FLAC, OGG and AAC files.
What you can generate
- Voice (text-to-speech) — type a script, pick a voice model, and get back natural-sounding speech.
- Music — describe a track and let a music model compose it.
- Sound effects— describe a sound (“a rusty door creaking open”) and get a short clip.
Editing audio
- Trim — cut the clip down to a specific start and end time.
- Convert — change between MP3, WAV, FLAC, OGG and AAC.
The built-in player has play, pause and a scrub bar so you can preview before saving.
Working with video
The video workspace handles MP4, WebM, MOV and AVI files. For stitching multiple clips, audio tracks and titles into a single longer video, see Custom video.
Generating video
Editing video
- Crop — pick an aspect ratio (16:9, 1:1, 9:16, 4:3) and crop the frame.
- Resize — choose a fixed height (240, 360, 480, 720, or 1080) and the width is calculated automatically.
- Transcode — convert the container between MP4, WebM and MOV.
Custom video
Custom video is a separate creation mode for stitching multiple clips, images, audio tracks and titles into a single longer video. Where the regular video workspace produces one short clip at a time, custom video gives you a multi-track timeline and renders the whole composition out to a single MP4 (or WebM, or MOV).
Starting a composition
Drafting with AI
The fastest way to start is to describe what you want. CSuite drafts a script, scenes and titles for you, then generates the images, voice-over, music and SFX in parallel.
Editing the timeline
- Move and resize— drag a clip’s body to move it, drag its right edge to resize. Clips snap to whole-second ticks and to the start and end of every other clip.
- Inspector panel — click any clip to edit its properties: start, duration, fade in/out, plus per-kind controls (font and text for titles, fit for images, muted for video, volume for audio).
- Add clips — use the + Title / Image / Video / Audio palette to insert a new clip. The image, video and audio buttons open a picker listing files from your project folder.
- Delete — select a clip and press backspace.
- AI follow-up edits— go back to the AI prompt sidebar and ask for a change (“make the music quieter, add a logo at 3 seconds”) and CSuite produces a full timeline replacement that preserves your other clips.
Visual coherence
When the AI bootstraps a composition, it also picks a short visual theme — palette, lighting, mood — that gets appended to every image-generation prompt. The result is a sequence that feels like one shoot rather than a collage of unrelated frames. You don’t need to manage this yourself; it lives in the composition file and travels with the project.
Rendering to a file
When the timeline looks right, click Download… to open the export popover.
- Resolution — Native, 480p, 720p, 1080p or 2160p. Aspect ratio is preserved.
- Framerate — Native, 24, 30 or 60 fps.
- Container — MP4 (H.264), WebM (VP9), or MOV (H.264).
The rendered file lands in your project folder as a regular video file alongside any single-clip generations, ready to play, edit further or share.
Operate
Chat
Chat is a single conversational workspace where you can talk to a model and produce media in the same thread. Click the chat icon in the menu to open it.
Setting up a chat
What the chat can do
- Stream replies from the chat model.
- Generate a new image, sound or video on request — “make me a hero image of a coastline at sunset”.
- Edit the most recent media inline — “crop this to 16:9”, “trim the first two seconds”, “convert to WebM”.
- Take a previous image as a starting point and produce a variant from it.
- Use earlier images as the start and end frames of a new video.
/image, /audio or /video at the start of a message as a shortcut to tell the chat to generate that kind of content directly.Workflows
A workflow is a visual diagram that chains models and edits together. Think of it as a recipe you can run again and again — great for repeatable jobs like “turn a blog post into a voiced video with subtitles”.
The node types
- Input — your starting point. A prompt, a text file, an image, an audio clip or a video.
- Model— runs an AI model. Connect inputs to the “prompt”, “instructions” or media handles, and the node generates an output.
- Edit — a deterministic transformation: resize, crop, trim, convert, transcode.
- Combine — merges several files into one. Use it to play tracks together, or to glue clips end-to-end.
- File — saves the final result into your project folder.
- Note — a free-form sticky-note for labelling sections of the canvas. Notes have no inputs or outputs and never block a run.
Building a workflow
Manage
File history
- GeneratedFlux 1.1 Pro · 16:9 · “misty coastline at dawn”
- Cropped1920×1080 → 1600×900
- Img2imgNano Banana · added warmer light
- Renamedhero-final.png
CSuite keeps a timeline of everything that happened to each file. Open the history panel from any file in the sidebar to see:
- When and how the file was created.
- Which model and prompt produced each generation, and the exact settings (aspect ratio, format, references).
- Every edit that was applied — crop, resize, trim, convert.
- Renames and duplicates.
History travels with the file. If you rename or move a file inside the project folder, its history follows along.
Account & license
The Account screen has two tabs: Analytics and License. Provider keys are managed under Models, not here.
Analytics
- See total spend, request count, and token usage across the last 7, 30, 90 days, or all time.
- Break it down by provider, model, and modality so you can spot which workflow is eating your budget.
- Local-provider rows show
$0.00— they’re free to run, and they’re tracked alongside cloud usage so you can compare apples to apples.
License
- Activate a license — paste your key and click activate. The app validates the key online once, then stores a signed receipt that works offline.
- See your license status — active, expiring, or used on another machine. The app re-checks periodically in the background.
- Deactivate a machine — frees up the seat so you can use the license on a different computer.
Trust & help
Privacy & data
CSuite is local-first. Here’s exactly where your data goes:
- Your files live in the project folder you picked. They are never uploaded anywhere by CSuite.
- Your prompts go directly to whichever provider you picked for that generation. Local providers stay on your machine; cloud providers receive the prompt through your own API key.
- Your provider keys are stored locally on your computer (encrypted at rest on macOS), never on our servers.
- Your license is verified online when you first activate it; after that the app uses a signed receipt that works offline.
- What we never see — your prompts, your generations, your project files, your API keys, or which models you use.
Troubleshooting
A generation failed
- Check the model picker — is the right provider selected?
- Open Models, click the provider, and press Save key again to re-validate. Expired or invalid keys are the most common cause.
- Some cloud providers throttle accounts that run out of credit. Check your usage and balance on the provider’s dashboard.
A local model is stuck or slow
- Bigger models need more memory. If your machine has limited RAM, try a smaller model from the catalog.
- Restart the app — local runtimes free up memory on quit.
- In the Models screen, try deleting and re-pulling the model if a download was interrupted.
A video edit was canceled or didn’t finish
- Quitting the app while a video edit is running cancels the job. Re-run it once the app is back open.
- Very large source files take time. The progress bar shows how far along the edit is.
Still stuck? See Support below for how to get in touch.
Support
CSuite is built and supported by a small team — every email goes to a real person, and we read every one.
- Email support@csuite.so for bugs, questions, license help, and feature requests.
- Include your operating system, a short description of what you were doing, and — if relevant — the provider and model you had selected. The more we know up front, the faster we can help.
- Lost or never received your license key? Email us with the address you used to purchase and we’ll resend it.
- Have an idea? We genuinely want to hear it — the same inbox is the right place.
Refund policy
CSuite is a one-time purchase, sold with a no-questions-asked refund window. We’d rather you spend money on something you love than feel stuck with something you don’t.
- 7-day refund— if CSuite isn’t the right fit for any reason, email us within 7 days of purchase and we’ll refund your order in full.
- No forms, no surveys— a one-line message is enough. We don’t require a reason, though we’re always grateful when people share one so we can improve the app.
- How it works — refunds are issued to the original payment method via Stripe (typically 5–10 business days to land back on your statement). Your license key is deactivated as part of the refund.
To request a refund, email support@csuite.so with the email address you used at checkout.