Welcome to Jot: Your Offline Personal Assistant
I didn't ever consider myself a privacy advocate. At the end of the day, what would all these companies do with your data, serve you more targetted ads? How bad is that? The problem these days is, there are a number of other vectors around data brokering, just plain ol' security leaks or company acquisitions which causes a lot of uncertainty about where your data will end up. This is why I built Jot...
The Most Personal Data
Think about what goes into your notes or what questions you ask LLMs. We're sharing our fears. Our hopes. Our unfiltered thoughts about the people in our lives. The things you're too embarrassed to say out loud. Lately, I've been finding myself hesitating to type things into my other note taking apps or ask sensitive questions in ChatGPT.
My solution was pretty simple, make a personal assistant app - starting with notes and very tiny LLMs that can run locally. Eventually I'll move to transcription, reminders and more.
What Jot Does Differently
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Local-First Storage — Your notes are encrypted and stored on your device. There's no cloud database with your journal entries. No backup server that could be breached.
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Personal AI — Today, Jot's LLM runs entirely on your device. Your conversations never leave your phone. No server ever sees what you write or ask. This is great for summarization and brainstorming.
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Always Simple — Clean/familiar text editing interface that can export to HTML. No need to configure vaults out the gate, forget about that folder structure. Just open the app and start using it.
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No Accounts, No Forced Telemetry — You don't need to create an account. There are no ads. Fully opt-in telemetry.
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Flexible Architecture - We'll be adding new rich entry types regularly: countdowns, tasks, reminders, audio, galleries and more!
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Clear Monetization Strategy - I'm eventually going to incorporate paid features, The core set will always be free, which we will regularly expand. Examples paid features might include: audio recording/transcription, more customization options, self-hosted LLMs.
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Exportable - At the end of the day, everything is stored in SQLite, with encryption keys stored in keychain access. Notes are just HTML, chats are just JSON, everything is very exportable. I'll be adding easy importing/exporting features in the future!
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Source Available - Yes, Jot is source available (not full open source). The license is available in our repo. TL; DR: free for personal use, no redistribution, no commercial use.
Why This Matters
I built Jot because I wanted a notes app I could actually trust with my thoughts. Something that wouldn't get acquired and suddenly start serving ads. Something that couldn't have a data breach because there's no central database to breach.
In a world where every app wants to know everything about you, sometimes the most radical thing you can do is build something that doesn't. If you value your privacy and want a space to think freely, I hope you'll give Jot a try. It's available on iOS and Android, no account required.
Have questions or feedback? I'd love to hear from you. Check out our feature requests and bug reports page.