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What It Is

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What it is and what it does for you. One step deeper: Services, what actually runs.

Your best brain day now accessible.

Can't remember what you've forgotten? Change your environment to remember for you. Existential is that environment. It's just a notepad, until you tell it what to do.

Everything else on your phone surfaces what someone else decided needs your attention. This surfaces what you decided. What you're building is your Diagram: the plan from your best day, followed on the rest.

Underneath is a curated set of open-source apps (notes, photos, money, files, monitoring, home automation) run as one system. Turn on what you want and it comes up wired together.

What you get​

  • Decisions run themselves. A decision is a file, and it runs whether or not you remember it.
  • Plain files. Everything you build is readable without Existential.
  • Your hardware. No account, no subscription.

What it looks like from outside​

  • One system, not twenty app addresses.
  • Nothing leaves unless a routine you wrote sends it.
  • Everything inside is plain files on your disks.

The AI​

Everything reaches the same model:

You want to…You get…
Ask for something out loudA conversation, anywhere in the house, in a voice you chose
Hand off a piece of workAn agent that reads your notes and the web and files the answer back in your workspace
Not do a chore againA routine that runs on a trigger and only speaks up when it matters

All three use one OpenAI-compatible URL. Point it at a bigger model and all three change. Which projects provide each piece: Services.

What Core installs​

The first ./existential.sh builds Core. No GPU, no model downloads. Tailscale gives it HTTPS on every device you log in.

code-serverYour work dir, workspace/, in a browser tab: editor, plus a terminal with claude and opencode ready
DecreeRuns the automations in workspace/.decree/ on a schedule or an inbox message
ntfyHow an automation tells you it finished, failed or is waiting for you

Everything else is an add-on, one flow or one flag away: Services.

Try it​

Prerequisites: Docker usable without sudo, a computer to host it, this repo, and, for Core, Tailscale logged in on that machine and on every device that should reach it.

git clone https://github.com/jtmckay/existential.git
cd existential

./existential.sh            # builds Core (or nothing), asks for a login
docker compose up -d

Full walkthrough in Getting Started.