NODUS

Local intelligence, mapped.

NODUS is a local-first desktop app for thinking with AI as a map, not a transcript. Instead of one long chat, each question and answer is a node on a canvas. Branch from any point, keep every alternative path visible side by side, and see how an idea actually grew instead of scrolling to find it.

Status: pre-alpha. APIs, data formats, and the UI are all expected to change without notice. There's no packaged release yet — running NODUS today means building it from source. See ROADMAP.md for what's built and what's next.

Who it's for

Anyone who thinks better visually than linearly — researchers exploring a problem from multiple angles, developers spiking out an approach, writers branching a draft, or anyone who's lost a good tangent scrolling back through a normal chat interface.

Key features

Implemented so far:

• Visual conversation graph — drag, zoom, and pan an unbounded canvas of connected nodes (@xyflow/react).
• Branching — create a child node from any node; every branch stays visible, nothing is silently replaced.
• Node editing — create, inline-edit, copy, and delete nodes, with a choice on delete between removing a whole branch or keeping its children (reconnected to their grandparent).
• Local persistence — every workspace is a SQLite database on your machine (via the Tauri SQL plugin). Nothing leaves your computer, and nothing survives only in memory.
• Deterministic mock AI provider — streamed, cancellable generation with structured suggested follow-ups, so the whole interaction model works end to end before any real model is wired in.

Planned, not yet built (see ROADMAP.md for the full list and current order): local model support via Ollama, cloud providers (OpenAI, Anthropic) with OS-credential-store key storage, local identities, long-term user-controlled memory, a Kanagawa-based theme system, and a private local activity view.

Quick start

There's no installer yet — build from source:

git clone https://github.com/SuryadevChippada/NODUS.git
cd NODUS
npm install
npm run tauri dev

This opens NODUS as a native desktop window. The first launch seeds a small demo graph into a local SQLite database and reloads it on every later launch.

Prerequisites

• Node.js and npm
• Rust (stable toolchain)
• Your platform's Tauri build tools — see the Tauri prerequisites guide

Verified so far on macOS (Apple Silicon). Other platforms aren't tested yet — see docs/ARCHITECTURE.md for exact verified versions.

Development

npm run dev            # Vite dev server only (frontend, no Tauri window)
npm run tauri dev      # full app with hot reload
npm run test             # Vitest unit/component tests
npm run lint              # ESLint
npm run format:check     # Prettier check
npm run build             # frontend production build (tsc + vite build)

Rust-side checks, run from src-tauri/:

cargo check
cargo fmt --check
cargo clippy

Building the app

A full packaged build (npm run tauri build) produces a platform-native bundle, but NODUS is pre-alpha and this hasn't been set up with distribution/signing yet — for now, npm run tauri dev is the supported way to run it. See ROADMAP.md's packaging phase.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md for the development workflow, and CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md for how we expect people to treat each other here. For anything beyond a small fix, please open an issue or discussion first.

Other useful docs:

• docs/ARCHITECTURE.md — verified stack, current status, and design decisions
• SECURITY.md — how to report a vulnerability
• SUPPORT.md — where to ask questions vs. file a bug

License

MIT — see LICENSE.