GridFractAL
Run your own

Install GridFractAL on your machine

It runs entirely on your computer. No database to install, no Docker, no .NET — unpack it and start it.

Windows · 64-bit Intel or AMD
sha256 7ece95cc529d8a2b910b92fbe41f7a55afed8a3b0a9dfb7b64522fe591bdb0db
96 MB ↓
macOS · Apple silicon
sha256 71ce7ff2974f7a48c9dc5083b6cf1363f701cc4bff2b9271664d4f34cd3ea105
92 MB ↓
Linux · 64-bit Intel or AMD
sha256 f3a389bea4c32f2f1e8f2bfa259d72d062bc55ff9df2dce92ebd25a58728a09f
97 MB ↓
The checksums confirm the file arrived intact. They say nothing about who built it — that needs a signature, and these are not signed yet.
Setup

Three steps

  1. Unpack it somewhere you can write — your home folder is fine, Program Files is not.
    The install folder stays read-only in use. Your data lives separately, in .gridfractal in your home folder, so replacing the application later keeps everything.
  2. Run the launcher — gridfractal.cmd on Windows, ./gridfractal on macOS and Linux
    First start takes a minute — it is creating your database and generating the keys this instance will be known by. Later starts are quick.
  3. Open the URL the launcher prints
    It is also written to .gridfractal/access-url.txt in your home directory, readable only by you. Open that URL once and it sets a session cookie; bookmark it and it keeps working across restarts.
    Not plain http://localhost:8099 — that answers 401. The address carries a one-time token because the token is what signs you in, and it is deliberately never written to the log: logs roll to a world-readable file for 30 days, so a URL printed there would publish the one credential gating the whole application. Treat that file as a password.
    Loopback only, deliberately: the application signs every request in as you, so anything reachable from the network would be handing that out.
macOS and Linux: the launcher may need chmod +x gridfractal first. On macOS, Gatekeeper refuses an unsigned application on a double-click — open it from Finder with right-click → Open, which offers a way past that a double-click does not.
Semantic search arrives separately. The embedding model is about 90 MB and is not in this download, so a new install starts without it and says so rather than pretending: recall and related-item search report that no model is configured instead of quietly returning nothing. Everything else — the inbox, triage, workflows, the companion app — works without it. Point Embeddings:Onnx:ModelPath and :VocabPath at a downloaded model to switch it on.
Connecting

Joining this server

Optional. Your instance works on its own; joining is what lets instances reach each other.

  1. Create an account here, then choose Add an instance
  2. Copy the code it shows you
  3. In your GridFractAL, open My connections and paste it under Connect to a server
This server carries sealed messages between instances and can read none of them. What your instance stores stays on your machine.