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Show HN: Rowboat – AI coworker that turns your work into a knowledge graph (OSS)

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Show HN: Rowboat – AI coworker that turns your work into a knowledge graph (OSS)

#1

Post by segmenta »

Hi HN,

AI agents that can run tools on your machine are powerful for knowledge work, but they’re only as useful as the context they have. Rowboat is an open-source, local-first app that turns your work into a living knowledge graph (stored as plain Markdown with backlinks) and uses it to accomplish tasks on your computer.

For example, you can say "Build me a deck about our next quarter roadmap." Rowboat pulls priorities and commitments from your graph, loads a presentation skill, and exports a PDF.

Our repo is https://github.com/rowboatlabs/rowboat, and there’s a demo video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AWoGo-L16I

Rowboat has two parts:

(1) A living context graph: Rowboat connects to sources like Gmail and meeting notes like Granola and Fireflies, extracts decisions, commitments, deadlines, and relationships, and writes them locally as linked and editable Markdown files (Obsidian-style), organized around people, projects, and topics. As new conversations happen (including voice memos), related notes update automatically. If a deadline changes in a standup, it links back to the original commitment and updates it.

(2) A local assistant: On top of that graph, Rowboat includes an agent with local shell access and MCP support, so it can use your existing context to actually do work on your machine. It can act on demand or run scheduled background tasks. Example: “Prep me for my meeting with John and create a short voice brief.” It pulls relevant context from your graph and can generate an audio note via an MCP tool like ElevenLabs.

Why not just search transcripts? Passing gigabytes of email, docs, and calls directly to an AI agent is slow and lossy. And search only answers the questions you think to ask. A system that accumulates context over time can track decisions, commitments, and relationships across conversations, and surface patterns you didn't know to look for.

Rowboat is Apache-2.0 licensed, works with any LLM (including local ones), and stores all data locally as Markdown you can read, edit, or delete at any time.

Our previous startup was acquired by Coinbase, where part of my work involved graph neural networks. We're excited to be working with graph-based systems again. Work memory feels like the missing layer for agents.

We’d love to hear your thoughts and welcome contributions!

Show HN: Rowboat – AI coworker that turns your work into a knowledge graph (OSS)
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Re: Show HN: Rowboat – AI coworker that turns your work into a knowledge graph (OSS)

#6

Post by segmenta »

alansaber wrote: post #2

Big fan of the idea. 1: is the context graph tweakable in any way 2: how does the user handle/approve background tasks? Otherwise cool and good job!

Thanks!

All the knowledge is stored in Markdown files on disk. You can edit them through the Rowboat UI (including the backlinks) or any editor of your choice. You can use the built in AI to edit it as well.

On background tasks - there is an assistant-skill that lets it schedule and manage background tasks. For now, background tasks cannot execute shell-commands on the system. They can execute built-in file handling tools and MCP tools if connected. We are adding an approval system for background tasks as well.

There are three types of schedules - (a) cron, (b) schedule in a window (run every morning at-most once between 8-10am), (b) run once at x-time. There is also a manual enable/disable (kill switch) on the UI.

Re: Show HN: Rowboat – AI coworker that turns your work into a knowledge graph (OSS)

#7

Post by segmenta »

rezmoss wrote: post #5

[dead]

Thanks! Agent capabilities are getting commoditized fast. The differentiator is context. If you had a human assistant, you'd want them sitting in on all your meetings and reading your emails before they could actually be useful. That's what we're trying to build.

Re: Show HN: Rowboat – AI coworker that turns your work into a knowledge graph (OSS)

#8

Post by segmenta »

haolez wrote: post #3

Cool idea. I use Logseq with some custom scripts and plugins for that. Works very well with today's models capabilities.

Thanks. Obsidian and Logseq were definitely an inspiration while building this. What we’re trying to explore is pushing that a bit further. Instead of manually curating the graph and then querying it, the system continuously updates the graph as work happens and lets the agent operate directly on that structure.

Would love to know what kind of scripts or plugins you’re using in Logseq, and what you’re primarily using it for.

Re: Show HN: Rowboat – AI coworker that turns your work into a knowledge graph (OSS)

#10

Post by segmenta »

nkmnz wrote: post #4

How does this differ from https://github.com/getzep/graphiti ?

Graphiti is primarily focused on extracting and organizing structured facts into a knowledge graph. Rowboat is more focused on day-to-day work. We organize the graph around people, projects, organizations, and topics.

One design choice we made was to make each node human-readable and editable. For example, a project note contains a clear summary of its current state derived from conversations and tasks across tools like Gmail or Granola. It’s stored as plain Markdown with Obsidian-style backlinks so the user can read, understand, and edit it directly.

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