Most productivity tools make an implicit trade: you get convenience, they get your data. Your meeting recordings go to their servers. Your project notes live in their database. Your AI assistant learns from your conversations to improve their product. The deal is rarely stated that plainly, but it's the deal.
LifeDash is built on a different premise: your work stays on your machine. Full stop.
What LifeDash Does
LifeDash is a free, open-source desktop meeting workspace for Windows and macOS beta. It connects the tools professionals need after a conversation:
- Session Workspace: Record a meeting, transcribe locally, and work with Transcript, Board, and Brain in one connected session.
- Digital Twin: Author a professional profile and control source-linked learned memory used in live assistance, triage, and briefs.
- Living Brain and Search: Connect sessions, projects, people, topics, decisions, and cards, then ask questions with cited answers.
- Boards and Agents: Turn action items into connected cards and use agents where the source context is available.
Why Local-First Matters
The phrase "local-first" gets used loosely, so let's be specific about what it means in LifeDash.
Meeting recordings, transcripts, boards, embeddings, and Twin memory are stored locally by default. No LifeDash account is required for the local desktop workflow. Optional sync and cloud processing are explicit choices.
When you select a cloud provider for a task, the relevant content goes to that provider's API. LifeDash labels that choice. If you prefer local operation for supported tasks, LM Studio and Ollama let you run compatible models on your own hardware.
This is not just a privacy talking point. Local processing keeps the core workspace available offline, avoids making every action wait on a server, and leaves you in control of the data stored on your device. Cloud AI and sync remain optional, explicit choices.
The Open Source Commitment
LifeDash is free and open source under the AGPL-3.0 license. The full product is available without paid tiers, subscriptions, premium features, or planned LifeDash fees.
Development happens in the open on GitHub, where anyone can contribute, share prompts, and help shape the roadmap.
Built by Someone Who Uses It Every Day
LifeDash is a solo project. It exists because its builder needed these tools, found the existing options unsatisfying, either too expensive, too cloud-dependent, or too fragmented, and decided to build something better.
That context shapes every product decision. Features get added because they solve real workflow problems, not because they make a landing page look more impressive. The roadmap is driven by what's actually useful in a working day.
If that sounds like the kind of tool you've been looking for, you can download it for free from the homepage. No account required to get started.