Sovereignty.
Yours, on your machine. Mandala is a program you run, not a service you sign up to. There is no hosted Mandala, and nothing in it works only if we host it. Your data, your rules, your keys and your accomplice live where you put them.
Mom’s Friendly Robot Company offers to host Planet Express’s records “for free, forever, with love”. Hermes declines, in triplicate.
He doesn’t need the offer. Every order, invoice and note the company has sits on one small server under his desk, next to the stamp drawer. Mira runs there too.
When the office line goes down, the work goes on. If Hermes ever wants to leave, there is a folder to copy and nobody to ask.
The real layout. Back up this folder and you have backed up everything Mandala knows.
There is no hosted Mandala.
We don’t run it for you, we don’t hold an account for you, and your data never passes through us. That is a decision, not a missing feature: a product with a hosted edition ends up with features that only work there. Mandala has none.
Signing in is your first name and a passkey: Face ID, Touch ID or a security key. Nothing is registered anywhere but on your machine.
Sign in with ChatGPT or Grok, paste an API key, or run a local model. With a cloud model, that provider sees what each request needs. With a local one, nothing leaves the machine.
Mail, calendar and the rest connect with your accounts. Passwords and keys are stored encrypted on your disk.
One program, run as one service. No database to install beside it, no containers to orchestrate.
The app, on your desk.
todayAt home, in the office, or a VPS you rent.
todayComing to the App Store.
comingComing soon.
comingSovereignty you can afford.
Owning your infrastructure usually means running a fleet: a database, a queue, a search engine, a cache, an app server. Mandala is one program that contains its own storage. A modest machine carries a person, or a small business.
From Mandala’s own system requirements. Mail-heavy use grows the disk: the mail index, attachments and record history.
Files stay files.
The test of ownership is leaving. What you know is kept as Markdown files in folders, readable in any editor, with or without Mandala. Your rules are text. Your history exports in a readable form, signatures included.
Documents are Markdown with a few lines of properties on top. Open them in any editor, keep them in git, back them up however you like.
Change AI provider in Settings. Your accomplice keeps its name, its memory and its rules.
Delete the app and its folder, and it’s gone. Privacy, in plain words
Lumon Industries
A delivery every Thursday since 2023. Use the side door, bring a floor plan, and don’t ask what the department does. See [[slurm-free-holiday-run]].
Linked: 14 orders · 12 invoices · 1 open project
What works today, and what’s coming.
Mandala on a Mac and on a Linux server, as one program. Sign-in by first name and passkey. Your own model: ChatGPT or Grok sign-in, API keys, or a local model through Ollama. Logins encrypted on disk. Documents as Markdown files. Devices linked directly to each other. Signed updates, with the previous version put back if the new one doesn’t come up.
“Add a server”: Mandala setting itself up on a VPS you rent, from Settings (built, not yet released). The iPhone app. Windows and Android.
Sovereignty has a price: you keep the backups, and you keep your ways back in. Mandala gives you several: a synced passkey, a second device, a paper key of 24 words, people you trust. If all of them are lost, nobody can give the account back, us included. The docs say exactly what to back up. Backups and restore
If it only works when someone else runs it, it isn’t yours.
No. Each person and each business runs their own Mandala, on a Mac, a home server or a VPS they rent.
It is a machine you rent and control: your disk, your keys, your choice of provider, and you can move it. That is different from a service that holds your data in its own format.
Nothing about you or your work. There are no analytics and no crash reports. The app checks for updates, and you can turn that off.