Rowboat

Rowboat indexes your work into a living knowledge graph and uses that to get work done on your machine. It includes work surfaces for collaborating with AI: email client, notes, browser, code mode, meeting note taker, and workspaces for different projects.

Download latest for Mac/Windows/Linux: Download

⭐ If you find Rowboat useful, please star the repo. It helps more people find it.

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Overview

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Spaces: the multiplayer part

Everyone on the team runs their own Rowboat on their own machine, with their own memory of their work and their own model keys. A Space is where you come together: a place to talk, share files and whiteboards, and get work done. Type @rowboat in a Space and your Rowboat works with your context on your machine, then brings the result back to the room as you.

How it fits together

Each person's Rowboat is a full local assistant. The Space lives on a small server called Harbor. The only thing that crosses the line between the two is what you (or your agent, acting as you) chose to post.

flowchart LR
  subgraph J["John's machine"]
    JR["John's Rowboat<br/>Brain · email · notes · code"]
  end
  subgraph S["Sarah's machine"]
    SR["Sarah's Rowboat<br/>Brain · email · notes · code"]
  end
  subgraph M["Sam's machine"]
    MR["Sam's Rowboat<br/>Brain · email · notes · code"]
  end
  H[("Harbor<br/>the Space: messages, files, whiteboards")]
  JR <-- "only what gets posted" --> H
  SR <--> H
  MR <--> H

Harbor has one core and three doors: HTTP, a live WebSocket, and an MCP server. Rowboat's own agent gets no privileged path. It reaches the Space through the same MCP door any other agent would use, so anything Rowboat can do in a Space, your own agent can do too (see Bring any agent).

What the room sees

When you address your Rowboat in a thread, the whole room saw the ask, so the receipt is a reaction on your message, not a stream of chatter:

Reaction	Meaning
👀	Your Rowboat picked it up and is working. The room also sees a live "Rowboat is working" chip.
✅	Done. When the outcome speaks for itself (a file edited, a thread titled, a message pinned), that is all you get. A reply is posted only when the ask wanted an answer.
❗	It needs you: a decision, a confirmation, or something it could only explain with private detail. It asks in your own chat, which only you can see, never in the room.

Everything an agent writes is attributed to its person, "Name (via Rowboat)", and stays in history like any other message.

Privacy rules your Rowboat follows in a Space

Everything it posts lands in front of the team. Everything it reads might be private to you. So:

• Read only what the task needs. "Message Harsh" needs a member id, not the HR directory.
• Answer only what was asked. What it saw in your files, DMs, email or notes along the way does not go into the reply.
• Private crosses to shared only on request, and as a summary. "Add my meeting notes to the roadmap" writes what the room needs from them, never the notes themselves. It never pastes emails, chats or DM content into a Space.
• A receipt says what it did, not what it read.

Get a Space

• Create a server. In the app, open Spaces and choose Create a server. Sign in with your Rowboat account (Google or Microsoft) and you get a hosted server with your first Space. Add teammates with Copy invite link.
• Join a server. Paste the invite link someone sent you. Invites bind your sign-in to a membership; a server can restrict joins to an email domain.
• Self-host. Harbor is open source and lives in this repo. See Run your own Harbor.

You can belong to several servers at once, and a server can be just you: your notes to self live in a one-member DM.

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Installation

Download latest for Mac/Windows/Linux: Download

All release files: https://github.com/rowboatlabs/rowboat/releases/latest

Google setup

To connect Google services (Gmail, Calendar, and Drive), follow Google setup.

Voice input

To enable voice input and voice notes (optional), add a Deepgram API key in ~/.rowboat/config/deepgram.json

Voice output

To enable voice output (optional), add an ElevenLabs API key in ~/.rowboat/config/elevenlabs.json

Web search

To use Exa research search (optional), add the Exa API key in ~/.rowboat/config/exa-search.json

External tools

To enable external tools (optional), you can add any MCP server or use Composio tools by adding an API key in ~/.rowboat/config/composio.json

All API key files use the same format:

{
  "apiKey": "<key>"
}

How it’s different

Most AI tools reconstruct context on demand by searching transcripts or documents.

Rowboat maintains long-lived knowledge instead:

• context accumulates over time
• relationships are explicit and inspectable
• notes are editable by you, not hidden inside a model
• everything lives on your machine as plain Markdown

The result is memory that compounds, rather than retrieval that starts cold every time.

Bring your own model

Rowboat works with the model setup you prefer:

• Local models via Ollama or LM Studio
• Hosted models (bring your own API key/provider)
• Swap models anytime — your data stays in your local Markdown vault

Extend Rowboat with tools (MCP)

Rowboat can connect to external tools and services via Model Context Protocol (MCP). That means you can plug in (for example) search, databases, CRMs, support tools, and automations - or your own internal tools.

Examples: Exa (web search), Twitter/X, ElevenLabs (voice), Slack, Linear/Jira, GitHub, and more.

Example: Parallel web search

Parallel Search MCP provides web_search and web_fetch for public web search and page extraction without a Parallel account or API key. Free access is rate limited.

Open Settings → MCP Servers, add the parallel entry to your existing mcpServers object, and click Save. Keep any other server entries. If no servers are configured, use:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "parallel": {
      "url": "https://search.parallel.ai/mcp"
    }
  }
}

This connects through Rowboat's existing Streamable HTTP client. Ask Rowboat to list the tools on the parallel server, then try: "Use Parallel to find the official MCP documentation."

Once configured, Rowboat can invoke these tools during its work, subject to your MCP tool permissions. Queries, requested URLs, and any supplied objectives or context are sent to Parallel. This setup leaves Exa and other configured providers unchanged. To remove it, delete the parallel entry in Settings → MCP Servers and save.

Local-first by design

• All personal data is stored locally as plain Markdown
• No proprietary formats or hosted lock-in
• You can inspect, edit, back up, or delete everything at any time

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Build the desktop package

Use Node 22 or 24 for Electron packaging. The packaging hook rejects other versions before building; Node 26 can exit during Electron ZIP extraction without producing an app.

cd apps/harbor && pnpm install --frozen-lockfile && pnpm -r build
cd ../x && pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
cd apps/main && npm run package

The unpacked application is written under apps/x/apps/main/out/. For an unsigned local build, set ROWBOAT_SKIP_CODE_SIGNING=1 when running the package command.

Run your own Harbor

Harbor is the Spaces server. It is open source, in this repo at apps/harbor, and it is what Rowboat's hosted servers run. One process serves one org or many, on top of Postgres.

Try it locally in a minute. The dev entry boots a seeded single-org Harbor (a small team and a "Roadboard" space) in memory on port 4272, with dev tokens instead of real sign-in:

cd apps/harbor
pnpm install && pnpm build
cd packages/server && pnpm dev

In the app, open the Spaces dialog, choose Add a dev server, and point it at http://localhost:4272 with one of the seeded member ids. Or talk to it directly: every route in /v1/*, the live stream at /v1/live, and the agent door at /mcp. Set DATABASE_URL to make it durable.

Deploy it for a team. The Dockerfile builds the deployment image. Orgs are served by hostname under your apex domain (<slug>.<APEX_DOMAIN>), sign-in is OpenID Connect against an issuer you pin, and new members only ever arrive by accepting an invite.

Variable	What it does
HARBOR_MODE=deployment	Multi-org mode: resolve the org from the request host.
DATABASE_URL	Postgres. Schema is a versioned, append-only migration ladder.
APEX_DOMAIN	Orgs live at <slug>.<APEX_DOMAIN>; the apex itself serves create-org and my-orgs.
AUTH_ISSUER	The OIDC issuer whose tokens are trusted (JWKS-verified). Without it Harbor falls back to dev tokens, which must never be exposed publicly.
AUTH_PUBLISHABLE_KEY	Enables the login/consent page (social sign-in only; Harbor never sees a credential).
HARBOR_ALLOWED_DOMAINS	Comma-separated email domains allowed to accept invites (single-org mode).
BLOBS_DIR or BLOBS_S3_BUCKET	Where uploads go: local disk, or any S3-compatible bucket (BLOBS_S3_ENDPOINT, BLOBS_S3_REGION).
PORT	Defaults to 4272.

The wire contract between Harbor and everything that talks to it is the @rowboat/spaces-protocol package; apps/harbor/CONTRACT.md is its narrative, including the merge semantics, the invite ceremony, and what is deliberately still v0. Expect breaking changes while we dogfood.

Bring any agent to a Space

Every org exposes an MCP server at https://<org address>/mcp (streamable HTTP). It is the exact surface Rowboat's own agent uses: read and post messages, react, open DMs, create and manage threads, read files, propose changes with a base version, upload attachments, search, catch up on activity, mint invites. Whatever connects authenticates as a member and everything it does is attributed to that member, "Name (via )".

With Claude Code, for example:

claude mcp add --transport http my-team https://<org address>/mcp

Harbor publishes OAuth protected-resource metadata, so any MCP client that speaks OAuth 2.1 finds the sign-in flow on its own. Sign in as yourself and the agent works as you; sign in as a member you created for it and it has a seat of its own.

What's in this repo

• apps/x: the desktop app (Electron), the headless rowboat-server, and a Spaces-only mobile client
• apps/harbor: the Spaces server and the @rowboat/spaces-protocol contract

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