A new kind of reading — of yourself
You've already written the answer. Somewhere across the hundreds of Markdown files in your folder, you've already solved the problem you're stuck on this week. Basalt finds it — without ever leaving your machine. Five verbs, one Brief, and it never writes to your vault.
Every week, Basalt reads everything you've written and returns five short paragraphs about you. Tap each to see a real example — composed from anonymized vaults of three early users.
The work that compounds is the work nobody asked for.
— 02-Projects/Atlas/HYPOTHESIS.md · fourteen weeks ago
You wrote a version of this sentence seven times across fourteen weeks. You never wrote it as a thesis. Basalt extracts the through-line, names it, and offers to promote it to a thesis file linked to all seven sources.
The launch sequencing is finally settled.
— 02-Projects/Atlas/Strategy/Mon.md
The whole thing is upside-down — we should ship the docs first, then the product.
— 02-Projects/Atlas/Strategy/Wed.md
Both can't be true. Either Monday-you was right and the sequence is set, or Wednesday-you saw the thing Monday-you missed. Basalt opens the contradiction, links the evidence on each side, and doesn't let you forget you have to choose which version of you is the one running the show.
Basalt reads your daily notes the way a good coach reads game tape: not what you say the strategy is, but what you actually did Tuesday afternoon. Then it asks you which one is the lie — the stated priority, or the lived one.
Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with them.
— 04-Reading/Carse-1986.md ↔ 02-Projects/Atlas/AUDIT.md
A note from your reading folder and a note from a project folder share a structural pattern that neither one names. Basalt notices that the reading note already solves the project's open question — and offers to import the relevant section as scaffolding.
The sustainable edge isn't speed alone — it's speed plus intelligence.
— 02-Projects/Atlas/HYPOTHESIS.md · eight months ago
A claim you wrote eight months ago. Four notes from the last six weeks all cite it. You haven't returned to it since the day you wrote it. Basalt surfaces dormant claims that recent work still depends on — the load-bearing thoughts you forgot you had — and walks you back to them before the next decision lands on them silently.
⊘ Falsification — Basalt commits in writing, in the brief itself: this finding is wrong if no new note semantically validates the source within sixty days · if the source loses more than thirty percent of its content · or if it is deleted. The receipts are part of the output.
Basalt is the only second-brain in this category that doesn't require Claude Code, doesn't write to your vault, and doesn't make a single network call in the Open tier.
Your notes are the most intimate document you keep. Basalt is built around a single non-negotiable: nothing you've written is allowed to leave the machine you wrote it on.
Reading, embedding, and reasoning all run on your machine via a local model (Ollama, by default). Turn off your wifi and Basalt keeps working. There is no "basalt.com" your notes are sent to. There never will be.
It produces exactly one file — a small local index — stored inside a single hidden folder you can delete in one keystroke. The Brief itself renders to your terminal; pipe it to a file only if you want one. Your existing notes are not renamed, moved, modified, or rewritten. Ever, by anything, without you asking.
~/.basalt/basalt.dbrm -rf ~/.basalt/ · leaves no traceMIT-licensed and open-source. The full source is on disk in front of you. If you don't trust us — and you shouldn't have to — read the code, fork it, audit it, run a packet sniffer on it. The product is a small, legible Python program. There's nowhere for a backdoor to hide.
Every note you've ever written is dormant capital. Each Brief is a small dividend. The longer your vault, the more it pays.
Daily notes, project files, half-finished thoughts. You write the way you've always written — Markdown in a folder.
Every Sunday night a local model rereads everything you've written and looks for the four kinds of unlock above. Quietly, on your machine.
A single, ten-minute document about you. Not a feed. Not a notification. A weekly newspaper with one subject — and you're it.
Promote the thesis. Resolve the contradiction. Send the email you've been putting off. Each action is one note returning to active circulation.
Fourteen-note sample vault, bundled with the install. Captured on a base-model laptop. From basalt demo to a buried insight in roughly thirty seconds.
Output above is real. Captions below explain what just happened.
Paste the lines below into a terminal. Basalt installs locally, downloads a small embedding model on first run, and shows you a sample brief from a built-in 14-note vault. Then point it at your own folder.
# 1. clone the repo $ git clone <repo-url> basalt $ cd basalt # 2. set up Python and install $ python3.12 -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate $ pip install -e . # 3. run on a 14-note sample vault, then on yours $ basalt demo $ basalt brief --vault ~/notes
Requires Ollama running with nomic-embed-text. About thirty seconds to first result on a base-model laptop.
Basalt is for anyone who has accumulated more notes than they can read. You don't have to be technical. You don't have to "use a system." You only have to have written.
You have folders inside folders. You stopped maintaining the canvas. Basalt reads what's actually there, not what's tagged. It doesn't ask you to rearrange.
Standups, board updates, customer calls, half-built strategies — all in scratchpads. Basalt reads them as one document and tells you which thread is actually compounding.
You write the same idea five different ways across five notes. Basalt notices, names it, and shows you which downstream notes cite an unstated assumption you've been carrying for two years.
An anonymized brief from a real user — a quant trader's vault, used with permission. Names changed, prose preserved.
You believe the work that compounds is the work nobody asked for. You've never written this down as a thesis. Across seven notes over fourteen weeks you've returned to it as a premise.
The launch sequencing is finally settled.
— 02-Projects/Atlas/Strategy/Mon.md
The whole thing is upside-down — ship the docs first, then the product.
— 02-Projects/Atlas/Strategy/Wed.md
Both can't be true. Either Monday-you was right and the sequence is set, or Wednesday-you saw the thing Monday-you missed. Which version is the one running the show?
A reading note from December (Carse-1986.md) describes a structural pattern that solves the open question in Atlas/AUDIT.md — a note you've been stuck on for three weeks. The two have never been linked.
A claim you wrote eight months ago. Four notes from the last six weeks all cite it. You haven't returned to it since the day you wrote it. Basalt surfaces dormant claims that recent work still depends on — the load-bearing thoughts you forgot you had.
All names anonymized. Prose preserved. Compiled locally in 1m 18s on a base-model laptop.
A small Python program, a local AI model, a single database file, and a folder of markdown. That's it.
nomic-embed-text), stored in a single SQLite file inside your vault. Reasoning is pluggable.From private betas and community threads. Identifying details removed.
Basalt found a thesis I'd been writing around for three months without naming. It just told me what I think. No app has ever done that.
It's local-first, MIT, and the output is a single beautifully-set document instead of a chat window. This is what PKM has been waiting for.
Surfaced a contradiction between two strategy memos I wrote two weeks apart. I could not have caught that on my own. This is the future of writing tools.
Ran it on a four-year vault. The drift section alone was worth more than a year of journaling prompts. I'm in.
All quotes shared with permission · names withheld by request
Pricing benchmarked against Reflect ($10/mo), Mem ($14.99/mo), Tana ($14/mo), Heptabase ($11.99/mo), and Roam ($15/mo). The local version is and will remain free under MIT.
Everything you see on this page. Runs on your computer.
For when you want the heavier reasoning to run somewhere faster than your laptop.
For people who want to be early. Limited to the first hundred.
~/.basalt/basalt.db, the local index of embeddings and findings. The Brief itself renders to your terminal; pipe --format json to a file if you want one. Basalt will not rename, move, or rewrite a single existing note. Uninstall is rm -rf ~/.basalt/ — your vault is left exactly as it was.