This is entirely different, and surprisingly familiar.

It's board game night at your friend's house. You're bringing snacks, someone else made dinner, everyone's bringing their own drinks. And you're playing a game your friend is making. Who does this belong to?

You volunteer at the neighborhood community garden. You collaborate on a school project. You organize the family reunion, a bi-weekly bike ride, your band's shows, a knitting meetup. Who do these belong to?

If it feels like a weird question, it's because we shouldn't have to ask. You know the answer. These things don't belong to any one person; they belong to everyone who contributes. They're made of the people in them.

We believe our digital lives shouldn't have to be any different.

independent, together

A potluck is a small miracle of infrastructure. No one owns it and no one charges admission. Everyone carries in a dish and a chair, and for an evening there's a place that belongs to everyone in it. Then everyone packs up, and everything goes home with the person who brought it.

Seamside is the internet, built as a potluck: a creative space made of nothing but your people's own devices. Everything you make together is live for everyone at once, and stays on the hardware of whoever brought it.

A Space only exists between its members, stored on their own devices.

spaces and frames

You and your people make a Space: one for the garden, the band, the reunion. You fill it with Frames, small single-purpose apps you discover or build by describing what you want. The signup sheet, the scoreboard, the zine you edit together. Everyone sees the same live thing from their own device, and making one takes about as long as making coffee.

seamside is free

We want everyone to be able to make things, share them, and work on them together. So Seamside will always be free for one host device, plus as many phones, tablets and other non-hosting devices as you want to connect to it.

We built it this way on purpose. Everything you make lives on your own hardware, so we never have to sell ads or data to keep it running. Later on, bigger setups with multiple always-on hosts will cost about the price of a cup of coffee.

how it works

your data is yours

It's a folder on your device. We don't store anything that belongs to you.

directly connected

Your devices and your trusted friends all talk directly to one another.

private by default

Encrypted from device to device. Nothing leaves unless you share it.

no tracking, no ads

We can't sell ads on data we never collect in the first place.

works offline

Everything lives on your own hardware and catches up when you reconnect.

the power to choose

Any AI is OK; local, hosted, or none at all. We don't make money on tokens or hosting.

yours for good

Your identity is a key you hold. There's no 3rd party account to log in to.

small is good

Small teams and small tools. Built for local community scale on purpose.

read the docs

getting started

We believe there is a better internet ahead of us that puts people back at the center. This is just the beginning, and we could use your help along the way.

When you're ready, come join us.

install seamside