Rowboat

Rowboat is an open-source desktop AI assistant for macOS, Windows, and Linux that indexes your work into a knowledge graph and uses it to get work done on your machine. It indexes email, meetings, Slack, and assistant conversations into an Obsidian-style backlinked graph stored locally as plain Markdown, so context accumulates over time and you can inspect and edit the notes yourself instead of the assistant searching documents from scratch on each request.

Around the graph sit built-in work surfaces: an email client that sorts important mail and drafts replies from your work context, a meeting note-taker that transcribes live audio and writes summaries back into the graph, an isolated browser where you log in only to the accounts the assistant may use, and a code mode that runs parallel coding agents with Claude Code or Codex. Background agents run on events such as a new email or on a schedule, and can call tools, search the web, use the browser, and write code. You can also build your own work surfaces, called apps, and share them.

Spaces add a multiplayer layer. Each teammate runs their own Rowboat with their own memory and model keys, and a Space is a shared channel and folder for messages, threads, Markdown docs with history, uploads, and whiteboards. Mentioning Rowboat in a Space wakes your own instance, which gathers context from your private data and posts the result back attributed to you. Privacy rules limit it to reading what the task needs and sharing private material only as a summary on request. Spaces live on Harbor, an open-source server that exposes HTTP, a live WebSocket, and an MCP server, so any MCP agent, including Claude Code, can join a Space with the same access Rowboat's own agent has.

Models are your choice: local models through Ollama or LM Studio, or hosted providers with your own API key. External tools connect through MCP or Composio, with optional Deepgram voice input, ElevenLabs voice output, and Exa web search.