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Show HN: Rowboat – Open-source, local-first alternative to Claude Desktop

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Re: Show HN: Rowboat – Open-source, local-first alternative to Claude Desktop

#71

Post by _puk »

segmenta wrote: post #69
_puk wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be watching closely, we're moving this way very quickly. If you get there it'll save me a job! One thought, the knowledge graph rowboat creates is passive, based on context in emails, transcripts etc. A tool to pull further context from an individual would be amazing. Sit there and chat with it to flush out all of the tribal knowledge (gotchas in this spec). We have Context Capsules running in production as agen…

Thanks - would love to have this work for you. This is a great idea. Almost like an interview mode where the assistant asks pointed questions (using your capsule spec as a guideline) and writes the answers back into the graph. And thanks for the production context - this is not something we would have come up with. So really helpful data point.

I have a lot of thoughts on this, I should start writing a bit more publicly.

Re: Show HN: Rowboat – Open-source, local-first alternative to Claude Desktop

#72

Post by QuicklyNow »

Really interesting, thanks for creating this. I've been slow to adopt the desktop apps (although use the web interface and VS code plugins for all the main players). This might just be the point at which there's a vendor-agnostic option worth investing my effort into setting up.

My question is, can I interact with it over mobile? If I'm away from the desktop, and I want to check-in with it (query the .knowledge, or trigger some coding task etc), is there that option?

Re: Show HN: Rowboat – Open-source, local-first alternative to Claude Desktop

#74

Post by segmenta »

nekusar wrote: post #64

1. No container to constrain a off-the-rails LLM. 2. Doesn't support generic IMAP email. 3. Doesn't accept my STT. 4. Doesn't accept my TTS. 5. Doesn't accept my SearxNG/custom search engine

Fair list:

1. True - no OS-level container today. The constraint is approval gating: consequential actions surface as a permission ask before they run (a separate supervisor LLM flags anything outside your intent). 2. True today. We'd deprioritized generic IMAP (drafts-on-thread is unreliable cross-provider), but you're the third person in this thread to raise it, so we'll scope it properly.

3/4/5. Today: Deepgram for STT, ElevenLabs for TTS, Exa for search.

At least for search we supported more providers earlier (e.g. Brave) and found the assistant's skills degrade when they can't lean on provider-specific capabilities, like Exa's granular search. So we trimmed and went deep on a few.

Feel free to raise a GitHub issue with what you want us to support and we'll do our best.

Re: Show HN: Rowboat – Open-source, local-first alternative to Claude Desktop

#76

Post by segmenta »

QuicklyNow wrote: post #72

Really interesting, thanks for creating this. I've been slow to adopt the desktop apps (although use the web interface and VS code plugins for all the main players). This might just be the point at which there's a vendor-agnostic option worth investing my effort into setting up. My question is, can I interact with it over mobile? If I'm away from the desktop, and I want to check-in with it (query the .knowledge, or t…

Yes! Under settings you can connect your WhatsApp or Telegram and chat with the assistant. It can query your knowledge and trigger coding tasks.

In addition, we have a caffeinate mode (in new release) that keeps your machine awake so the connection doesn't drop. We are also working on a mobile app.

Re: Show HN: Rowboat – Open-source, local-first alternative to Claude Desktop

#77

Post by nekusar »

segmenta wrote: post #74
nekusar wrote: post #64

1. No container to constrain a off-the-rails LLM. 2. Doesn't support generic IMAP email. 3. Doesn't accept my STT. 4. Doesn't accept my TTS. 5. Doesn't accept my SearxNG/custom search engine

Fair list: 1. True - no OS-level container today. The constraint is approval gating: consequential actions surface as a permission ask before they run (a separate supervisor LLM flags anything outside your intent). 2. True today. We'd deprioritized generic IMAP (drafts-on-thread is unreliable cross-provider), but you're the third person in this thread to raise it, so we'll scope it properly. 3/4/5. Today: Deepgram fo…

Thank you for addressing my list. I'd like to use it, but requirements on non-local services is a deal breaker for me.

Right now, with my Nanoclaw, I'm running it in a container on a VM on proxmox. If things get bad, I lose a backed up machine and any services it has credentials to.

I can understand why IMAP is a pain. There's plenty of functions that can trash mailboxes. I don't envy you all in this task.

For my STT and TTS, ones on the HN front page right now: https://ariya.io/2026/03/local-cpu-friendly-high-quality-tts...

And OpenWhispr is local Whisper model that I also run locally. And still, no data leaks. And since its local, its also FAST. I also use it via HomeAssiatant.

For search, I use SearXNG. Ive even changed my daily driver to it at home, since it gets great results and none of the public cloud forced crap (llm searches when I don't want it).

Re: Show HN: Rowboat – Open-source, local-first alternative to Claude Desktop

#78

Post by mrbluecoat »

piratebroadcast wrote: post #75

Rowboat markets itself as "local-first," but if you look in the actual codebase, transcription is Deepgram cloud, voice is ElevenLabs, analytics is PostHog, and the LLM is a cloud API.

I had a hunch that would be the case. I'm always nervous pointing any AI tool at my email, browser, and finances. Any similar solution that's truly local-first?

Re: Show HN: Rowboat – Open-source, local-first alternative to Claude Desktop

#80

Post by segmenta »

piratebroadcast wrote: post #75

Rowboat markets itself as "local-first," but if you look in the actual codebase, transcription is Deepgram cloud, voice is ElevenLabs, analytics is PostHog, and the LLM is a cloud API.

Local-first for us means: your data such as emails, notes, meetings, the knowledge graph - lives on your machine as plain Markdown, readable and deletable, and the app doesn't require our servers to run. You can also go fully local for the LLM with Ollama or LM Studio. We do special handling there, like suppressing background agents during chat, so local models aren't overwhelmed. That's the core of the product.

Some third-party APIs we couldn't avoid (search has to be an API call). For TTS/STT we deliberately chose cloud quality over local support for now - if there's demand, we'll support local.

On PostHog: usage metadata only, never content. Anonymous install ID unless you sign in to Rowboat; email and plan attached after. Everything sent is cataloged in apps/x/ANALYTICS.md. We shipped v1 with no analytics and were flying little blind on whether anyone used it. If you build without the PostHog env vars, it no-ops entirely.

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