Minerva is local-first, and that isn't a marketing word here — it's the architecture. Your thinking lives on your machine, in files you own. Here's exactly what that means, in plain terms.
Every note is a Markdown file in a folder you choose. You can open, back up, sync, edit, or move them with any tool you like. Minerva reads and writes that folder; it doesn't hold your data hostage in a database only it understands.
Full-text search, semantic search, and voice dictation are computed locally. Your notes aren't shipped off to a server to be indexed.
There's nothing to register. Minerva doesn't have a user database because it doesn't have users on a server — it has a copy running on your computer.
Minerva doesn't phone home to count what you do or watch how you use it. Your usage is your business.
Minerva's AI features work by sending the relevant part of your request to an AI provider (such as Anthropic) to generate a response — the same way any AI assistant does. That means when you use an AI feature, the text needed for that request is sent to that provider, under their terms and privacy policy. This only happens when you invoke an AI action; simply writing, linking, searching, and reading your notes involves no network calls of that kind.
You stay in control of what gets sent: AI actions are things you invoke deliberately, not background processes running over your whole library. And because the AI's output arrives as a proposal you review, nothing it returns is silently written into your notes.
The Minerva Clipper saves pages you choose to clip into your local thoughtbase. Imported sources — PDFs, web pages, references — are stored locally alongside your notes, as your files.
Local-first cuts both ways, honestly: there's no cloud backup you get for free. Your notes are as safe as the folder they live in, so back it up the way you back up anything else you care about — Time Machine, a synced folder, a git repository. The upside is total: no one can lose, mine, or lock up your thinking but you.
You don't have to take any of this on faith. Minerva is open source — the code that reads and writes your files, and the code that makes network calls, is there to inspect.