Hearth

Self host

Run Hearth yourself.

Three ways to keep more of your journal on hardware you control — and a plain account of what each one costs you. There are no screenshots on this page: what you would be buying is a stack rather than a skin, so what is written down instead is exactly what runs where.

Before you read on

You may not need this.

Your journal is encrypted on your device and the server stores only ciphertext — in every mode, on every plan. We don't read it. Turn on Private Vault and we can't: your passphrase becomes the only key, and we delete our spare.

That is free, it is already shipped, and for most people it is the honest answer. Self-hosting buys something narrower and more specific: no server of ours anywhere in the path, and no company sitting between you and your words. That is a real thing to want. It simply is not the same thing, and we would rather you knew the difference before spending anything.

Try Private Vault instead →

Three arrangements, by how much of it you run

We run itYou run it

Outpost

Bring your own AI

Hosted

your model, our journal

We keep the journal. You keep the model.

If both of those are more than you want to run: stay on hosted Hearth and point every AI call at an endpoint you control — your own model project, or a machine on your own network. You get AI that answers to you without operating a database.

Said plainly, because plain is the entire point of this page: the server still stores your ciphertext and still holds one sealed spare key, so this is the policy promise — we don't read it — and not the cryptographic one. Your words still reach a model. The difference is that you chose it, and you set its terms.

Cabin

Desktop App

$399 USD

once — not a subscription

One machine. Nothing leaves it.

Hearth as a desktop application, with a language model that runs on your own hardware. No account, no sync, no server of ours in the picture — reflections and chat are answered by a model sitting on your disk.

What is in it

  • Unlimited entries, backdating and tags
  • Photos at full resolution
  • Voice entries, transcribed on your own machine
  • Search that keeps working with Private Vault on, matched on your device
  • Import and export, any time, as plain files
  • On This Day, streaks and the year in review
  • All eight themes
  • The Unsent Vault
  • Future Me letters, sealed in the app and opened when the day comes
  • Inkling, with reflections and chat against your local model
  • Offline by default — there is nothing to be offline from
  • As much room as your disk has

Builds are hand-delivered at the moment. Write first and you will get a straight answer about where it stands before you pay anything.

Email us about self-hosting

Homestead

Personal Cloud

Let's talk

priced per deployment

Your own server. All your devices.

The whole Hearth stack on infrastructure you own, so your phone, your laptop and anyone else in the house all reach the same journal. Priced per deployment, because a one-person box and a family server are not the same job.

What it adds over the Cabin

  • Sync across every device you own
  • Your phone, pointed at your own origin
  • Push notifications, signed with your own keys
  • Email — letters, nudges, sign-in codes — from your own sending domain
  • Optional passphrase recovery, if you choose to run it
  • The MCP connector, so ChatGPT or Claude can ask your journal questions
  • The AI Twin, on your origin and your own model project
  • More than one person

What it costs you

Postgres, somewhere to keep encrypted media, TLS, backups you have actually tested, a mail domain with a warmed reputation, and either a machine with a decent graphics card or a paid model key. This is a real operational commitment. If that sentence reads as a chore rather than a weekend, take the Cabin.

The part nobody else will tell you

Self-hosting does not hand you zero knowledge. If you run passphrase recovery, a spare key exists — it is simply held by you instead of by us, and everything that used to be our promise is now yours to keep. Run it without one and everyone on your server gets Private Vault semantics: lose the passphrase, lose the journal. Hearth already takes that fork on its own when no recovery key is configured. Choose it on purpose rather than by accident.

Email us about self-hosting

The Cabin, honestly

What you give up

This is the list worth reading before spending $399. Every line is something the desktop app genuinely cannot do, and why — not a feature held back for a bigger tier.

One device. That is it.
There is no server, so there is nothing to sync to. Your journal lives on that machine and moves only when you move it.
Your phone is not included
The mobile app talks to an API origin, and a desktop-only install does not have one. If you want Hearth in your pocket, you want the Personal Cloud or the hosted app.
The AI is weaker. Genuinely.
A model that fits on your laptop is not a data-centre model, and no amount of prompt work closes that gap. Reflections are plainer and chat is shallower. If AI quality is the reason you are here, this is the wrong purchase.
No email of any kind
Sign-in codes, letter nudges and the weekly report all need a mail service with a reputation behind it. A desktop app has no business sending mail as us.
Future Me letters cannot be mailed to you
On the hosted app, opting one letter into full-text delivery seals that single letter's key so a worker can post it on the day. There is no such key here, so letters stay sealed in the app and open when you open them.
No push notifications
Web push needs signing keys and the browser vendors' own delivery endpoints. There is nothing here to push from.
No AI Twin
The Twin is a public chatbot: it needs an address strangers can reach and a document corpus hosted somewhere. That is the opposite of an offline app — not a gate we chose, but a contradiction.
No MCP connector
Letting ChatGPT or Claude ask your journal questions means being an OAuth server on a public address with TLS terminated in front of it. A laptop app is not one.
No recovery. None.
Nobody holds a spare key, so a forgotten passphrase is a lost journal. This is Private Vault's bargain with the safety net taken away. Write the passphrase down and keep it somewhere real.
Backups are yours
There is no copy on our side to restore from. Whatever your backup habit is, it has just become load-bearing.

Before you buy

Will it actually run well?

Local AI is the part people are most often disappointed by, so here are real numbers rather than a minimum-spec badge.

8 GB of memory
A small model. It works. Reflections are plainer and chat is shallower, and you will notice.
16 GB
The one to aim for, and the point where running it locally stops feeling like a compromise.
32 GB or more
The best that a local model can do today.
No graphics card at all
It runs. It is slow — think tens of seconds for a reflection rather than one or two.

Apple Silicon is the happy path, because the graphics chip can reach all of the memory. A recent NVIDIA card on Windows or Linux is good. An Intel Mac or an older card will get processor speeds however much memory is fitted.

If your machine sits at the bottom of that list, buy nothing yet. Install the free hosted app, find out whether you keep journaling at all, and come back when you know.

Checkable, not rhetorical

What leaves your machine

Every outbound connection each arrangement makes, what it is for, and whether you can stop it. This is published because “private” is a claim and a list of connections is a fact. The hosted app is included so there is something to compare against.

Cabin — Desktop App

  • Ordinary useNothing. No connection is made at all.Nothing to stop
  • Model downloadFetches the language model. Once.Yes — or fetch the file yourself and point at it
  • Update checkAsks whether a newer version exists. A version number, nothing else.Yes, and it ships switched off

Homestead — Personal Cloud

  • Your own serverSync between your own devices.It is your server
  • Whatever you configureModel, mail, push — each one a choice you make and can unmake.Entirely yours

Outpost — Bring your own AI

  • Our APISync. Ciphertext only.No — this is the hosted app
  • Your AI endpointReflections and chat, at an address you chose.You picked it

Hosted Hearth — for comparison

  • Our APISync. Ciphertext only.No
  • Our model providerReflections, chat and transcription. Nothing is kept afterwards.Yes — AI can be switched off entirely
  • Our mail providerSign-in codes, letters and nudges.Not while you have an account

The obvious worry

What if Hearth shuts down?

Paying once for software from a small shop deserves a straight answer, so here is one.

  • The licence is perpetual. It does not lapse, and it does not check in with anyone to keep working.
  • Activation happens offline. No server of ours can switch your copy off, because no server of ours is involved in running it.
  • Your entries export to plain files whenever you like. Export is free on every tier of Hearth and it is not an upsell here either.
  • The database and your encrypted media sit on your own disk, in formats that are documented.
  • Hearth is a small shop. That is precisely why these sentences are on the page rather than buried in a support article.

Get in touch

Tell us what you need.

Both self-hosted arrangements start with a conversation — the desktop app because it is better that you buy the right thing, and the personal cloud because what it costs depends on what you are running.

It helps enormously if you say which of the three you are leaning towards, which operating system you are on, and roughly how much memory the machine has. That is usually the difference between a useful reply and three rounds of questions.

Email us about self-hosting

selfhost@usehearth.ink · A real person reads that mailbox.