It started with you, not a rankings list.
Carabase surfaced durable signals from past meals: seafood and produce, serious wine, a love of Mugaritz—and enough disappointing Arzak visits.
The personal context engine
AI that knows your life. Without owning it.
Carabase turns the useful signal across your mail, messages, photos, notes, calendar, code, health and media into private, living context for the AI tools you choose. It runs on hardware you control.
Private alpha · Applications open
YOU
What does my actual listening say I like right now—not what I think I like?
CARABASE
You still describe yourself as a nu-metal and electronic person. Lately, though, you have been living in Noah Kahan, Justin Bieber, Sam Fender and Olivia Dean. Your taste has not narrowed. Its centre of gravity has moved.
SOUL.md · self-described
Music Folio · over time
A real Carabase session
Not “Where should anyone eat?” Where should you eat?
Codex used two layers: what you actually like, and what was genuinely open and relevant next week. We sped up the waiting; the work is real.
Then it checked the world as it is now.
Codex checked current menus, prices, opening days and reservation reality. Recent diner reports were practical clues, not truth.
Finally, it made a judgement.
Fit, distinctiveness, scarcity, availability and a credible fallback. Elkano and Rekondo rose; another Arzak visit fell away.
The result was not another “best restaurants in San Sebastián” list. It was a shortlist that could only have been made for you.
The difference
A codebase can show you what exists. Carabase remembers why.
Project context lives across code, issues, agent sessions and conversations. Carabase keeps the decisions attached.
Generic coding assistantCurrent repository
“I can explain what the retrieval code does today.”
The repository reveals current behaviour. It does not contain every rejected approach, unresolved trade-off or safety boundary.
With CarabaseProject memory
“Before you change retrieval, here is what is settled—and what remains open.”
- Keep the host database as the source of truth
- Keep Folio membership explicit and recall widening default-off
- Open question: hard restriction or soft boosting for scoped search
The context problem
The answer exists. It is simply spread across your life.
People should not have to paste their life into a chat window—or maintain a perfect second brain—before AI can help.
Noah Kahan leads your recent listening by a wide margin.
Retrieval changed. Recall widening remains default-off.
Tastes, projects and plans—connected, current and cited.
The commitments that make advice useful right now.
What you said, decided and learned along the way.
How it works
Carabase builds the missing context layer.
Three moves turn an impossible pile into useful, inspectable context in the moment it is needed.
Connect the life already in motion.
Authorised connectors and on-device harvesters collect signal without asking you to file, tag or remember the right folder.
MAIL · MESSAGES · PHOTOS · NOTES · CALENDAR · CODE · HEALTH · MEDIATurn the pile into living narrative.
Entities, relationships, time and provenance become Folios: cited context about the people, projects and tastes that matter.
EVERY FACT KEEPS ITS ORIGINGive the right context to the right tool.
Semantic, lexical and graph retrieval return grounded context with resolvable receipts—or abstain when the evidence is thin.
ONE CONTEXT LAYER · EVERY ASSISTANTLife-scale context
Useful because it knows more than one corner of you.
Music and taste
Recommendations shaped by what you play, what you own and how your taste changes over time.
RECEIPT · LISTENING HISTORY + VINYL + MUSIC FOLIO
Code and decisions
What changed, why it changed and which assumptions the next agent must preserve.
RECEIPT · GITHUB + LINEAR + AGENT SESSION + PROJECT FOLIO
Health and habits
Patterns across activity, recovery, appointments and personal notes without a cloud life archive.
RECEIPT · HEALTH DATA + CALENDAR + DAILY LOG
Model choice
Teach your context once. Use it everywhere.
Carabase is the neutral layer between the life you already live and every assistant you choose.
The life already in motion
Mail, messages, files, photos, calendars, code, health, media and more.
Living personal context
Time, entities, relationships, provenance, Folios and retrieval on hardware you control.
Whatever comes next
Everything relevant. Nothing surrendered.
Your life stays on your hardware.
Privacy is a property of the architecture, not a promise buried in a policy. Carabase keeps storage, transport and inference boundaries explicit.
LOCALSource data and knowledge substrate live on your machine.
ZEROThe host exposes no public ports.
CHOICERun local models or choose a provider per task.
RECEIPTSEvery retrieved claim retains provenance.
When you choose a cloud model, the context sent for that request is processed by that provider. Carabase makes that boundary visible rather than pretending storage, transport and inference are the same thing.
Working now
A real system, entering its first outside homes.
Carabase already runs our lives, and we can’t live without it. Now we’re looking for a few more devotees.
30+
Connectors and import paths
Life-scale signal, not a folder of curated files.
Local
Host-native chat
The full loop can run against a model the user controls.
Mac
Native workspace in hand
Daily Log, Folios and Summon; iOS companion in development.
Learn
Durable feedback loop
Corrections become future retrieval signals.
The open-core promise
The part that holds your life must remain inspectable.
The host—where all your data lives—is open source, and always will be. Don’t take our security claims on faith: inspect the code for yourself. If you’d rather not tinker, a hosted version is coming, built on exactly the same core.
Hosted version coming · same open coreThe useful objections
Before you hand it your life.
The short answers. The deeper thesis and technical detail remain available for people who want to inspect the argument as closely as the code.
What is a personal context engine?
A persistent layer between your digital life and the AI tools you choose. It gathers authorised signal, turns it into living, cited context and retrieves the relevant pieces when an assistant needs them.
Where does my data live?
Your source data and Carabase knowledge substrate live on your hardware. The host exposes no public ports. If you choose a cloud model, Carabase makes the context leaving your machine for that request explicit.
Can it work with the assistants I already use?
Yes. Carabase is the context layer, not another chat window. Codex, Claude, OpenClaw and local models can all use the same grounded context rather than building separate memories of you.
Is the host really open source?
Yes. The host—the part where your data lives—is open source and will remain so. A managed version is coming on exactly the same core for people who value convenience over tinkering.
What does the private alpha involve?
The private alpha is for technically confident people with a recent Apple Silicon Mac. We will do the setup together, then ask you to use Carabase on real work and tell us exactly what delights, confuses or breaks.
Private alpha
Help shape the first personal context engines outside my own home.
I am looking for technically confident people who use AI heavily, care about privacy and will try Carabase in real life—not just admire the architecture.
- A recent Apple Silicon Mac that can remain on
- About one hour for a white-glove setup
- Real use, candid feedback and tolerance for an early product
- Your data stays on your hardware throughout setup