Genealogy
Reconstruct family histories and individual lives from primary sources, across a tree, a timeline and a map, with GEDCOM in and out and every event tied to its evidence.
Open the demoResearch deeper Teach smarter Study better
A local-first workspace for researchers, teachers and students to connect sources, notes, data, ideas and learning materials — on your own machine.
The four main vaults
Four ways to work. One engine underneath.
Nodus is organised around vaults. A vault is a workspace with a purpose of its own — its own sections, its own vocabulary and its own live demo you can open right now in this browser. These four are the ones most people start from.
01Available now
Academic research
Build your own library inside Nodus, or connect the Zotero collection you already keep. Either way, every work becomes a network of claims, findings and methods, and each idea keeps the exact passage and page that support it.
01
Turn your own library — or your Zotero collection — into a graph of ideas, linking claims, findings and methods to their exact passage and page.
02
Surface debates, contradictions and research gaps, then explore them through semantic search, coverage analysis and reading paths.
03
Research and write with verifiable citations through Deep Research, the writing workshop and copilots for Word and LibreOffice.
“Repeated testing produced greater long-term retention than repeated studying, despite lower performance during practice.”
Roediger & Karpicke 2006 · p. 251 · linked to 3 ideas
02Available now
Teaching
Plan courses and classes, prepare activities and assessments, and track learner progress. All your teaching work stays connected to the materials and evidence behind it.
01
Organise academic years, courses, groups and subjects in one place, with timetables, calendars, materials and recordings connected.
02
Build question banks, weighted rubrics and printable exams, then apply a published assessment plan in a gradebook that keeps non-numeric states explicit.
03
Keep grades and student data private. AI generates teaching content only, and never grades, profiles or evaluates students.
| Student | Essay | Sources | Oral | Term |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| STU_0431 | 8.4 | 9.0 | 6.2 | 8.1 |
| STU_0432 | 6.8 | 7.9 | absent | — |
| STU_0433 | 9.2 | 8.6 | 9.4 | 9.1 |
| STU_0434 | pending | 6.5 | 7.8 | — |
Use of sources 40%
Argument 35%
Presentation 25%
Names never reach the model. Students are addressed by pseudonym, and grades stay out of every AI request.
Teaching vault · privacy rule
03Available now
Study
Organise subjects, notes and materials in one place. Study at your own pace, prepare for assessments and track progress.
01
Organise your material by academic year, course and subject, then add timetables, deadlines and events to the calendar with reminders.
02
Work with your materials locally, read PDFs and EPUBs, and ask questions that return you to the exact page, note or second.
03
Turn your own material into question banks, tests and flashcards, with spaced review and progress tracking.
Which phase separates sister chromatids?
From your lecture recording · 00:24:16
ProphaseAnaphaseTelophase
Every question is generated from your own notes and recordings, and links back to the moment it came from.
Study vault · question bank
04Available now
Databases
Organise fieldwork, corpora, catalogues and coding sheets in structured databases. Analyse the information while preserving the field types, relationships and categories in your data.
01
Build structured databases with different field types — relations, formulas, rollups, attachments, CSV import and reusable filtered views.
02
Run reproducible analysis and charts over your actual rows, from correlations and chi-square to ANOVA and regressions.
03
Ask questions and automate classification with AI columns, without inventing a field or value that is not in your data.
| Sample | Site | pH | Depth |
|---|---|---|---|
| FS-091 | Ridge north | 6.8 | 12 cm |
| FS-092 | Ridge north | 7.1 | 25 cm |
| FS-093 | Valley floor | 5.4 | 10 cm |
pH distribution across 248 samples · r = 0.62 with depth, computed in the app from your own rows.
Databases vault · analysis
And the rest
Other shapes the same engine takes.
Five more modes, all shipping today. They sit on the same private storage, the same settings and the same evidence rules as the four above.
Worldbuilding
Build a fictional world from connected characters, places, factions, cultures, maps and histories, and plan narrative threads while the rules and continuity of the setting stay visible.
Open the demoPrimary Sources
Work critically with archival documents and manuscripts: OCR, transcription and provenance beside the original image, separating what the document says from what you infer.
Testimony
Document and analyse interviews and oral history with local transcription, speaker separation, consent and access conditions, and every passage tied to a clickable timestamp.
Prosopography
Study groups and collective trajectories through scattered sources, resolving name variants and uncertain identities without hiding the doubt behind them.
Nodus Toolkit · included
Six tools for the jobs around the work.
Vaults give a project its structure. The Toolkit handles the practical jobs before, during and after it, in the same app.
Present differently
PDF Presenter
Present PDFs and external presentations as slides, with a presenter view, speaker notes and live annotations. Give every page its own speaker text, import existing notes or write them in Nodus, and read them from your computer or your phone — which doubles as a remote for the slides and the live tools.
Phone remoteLaser pointer
SpotlightLive drawingZoom
Pick a tool, then move over the slide — these are the real presenter tools.
Nodus Apps
Build small tools for researching, studying or teaching with AI, adjust them by describing the change out loud, and hand them to a class or a colleague with a QR code.
Nodus Convert
Convert documents, PDFs and images, with light OCR and text utilities, one at a time or in a batch — without bouncing between online services or losing the original.
Nodus Protect
Redact data, add watermarks, and create or verify traceable copies. Every step runs locally, and the untouched original stays in your workspace.
Nodus Translate
Translate text, documents and Zotero attachments with the model you choose, including a facsimile PDF mode that keeps the original layout intact.
OCR Workspace
AI-assisted OCR for the scans conventional engines give up on, with page-by-page review before anything is accepted, and a direct route into your vaults.
Free and local-first, honestly
Completely free. Completely yours.
Nodus 4 is open source under the AGPL-3.0-only licence, with no accounts, no subscriptions and no telemetry. Vaults and the optional cross-vault Library stay on your device and in the backup folder you choose. AI runs with your own key or fully offline through Ollama and LM Studio.
Free forever (AGPL-3.0-only)
100% local storage
Offline AI (Ollama · LM Studio)
Encrypted auto-backups
Audit ledger
MCP server built in
Keep going
Where to go from here.
Wiki
The complete manual: every vault, every view, every setting, with searchable guides for the whole app.
Read the docsBlog
Notes on how Nodus compares to the tools around it, workflows worth stealing, and what is being built next.
Read the blogContribute
Code, translations, documentation, bug reports or simply telling us what broke. Every grain counts.
Join inFAQ
What to expect and what not to, how the AI setup works, and what Nodus does with academic rigour.
Read the answersReady to meet your library?
Try the demo right here in your browser, or download the app and point it at your own material. Free and open source, forever.