Knovum: A Local-First AI Canvas That Cites Its Sources

Imagine dropping everything a project depends on — notes, saved web pages, a meeting recording, two PDFs — onto a single canvas, asking a question, and getting an answer where every claim links back to the exact passage, page or timestamp it came from. That is the promise of Knovum, a local-first AI workspace whose version 0.2.1 landed on November 5.

An infinite canvas instead of a chat box

Knovum is a desktop app for macOS and Windows (built with Tauri 2, Rust and Vue 3) organized around "Spaces": infinite canvases where sources, questions, reasoning and output sit side by side. Instead of scrolling a linear chat log, you watch how an answer was assembled. Ask something and the response carries citations pointing at the exact passage, timestamp or page in your own material. Select the parts you like and turn them into a document, an image, a video or a voice track, with a recorded trail from every result back to the inputs that produced it.

Local-first, by design

The pitch is that your library never leaves your machine: the workspace is local-first and the project documents on-device AI rather than a mandatory cloud API. For anyone uneasy about uploading research notes, interviews or client documents to a third-party chatbot, that architecture is the whole point.

Early days, and a license worth reading

Two honest caveats. First, Knovum is brand new: v0.2.1 is early access, Linux and Windows-on-ARM are explicitly out of release scope, and the project is only weeks old. Expect rough edges. Second, the license: Knovum is free for personal, non-commercial use under its own Personal Noncommercial License 1.0. The source is available to read and modify for personal use, but this is not open source in the OSI sense, and commercial use is not covered. If you need a tool you can deploy at work, this one is not there yet.

Signed installers live on GitHub Releases: a .dmg for Apple silicon and Intel Macs, and an x64 setup for Windows. If you like the idea of an AI that shows its work, Knovum is one of the most interesting young projects to watch — and our Knovum listing has the key facts.

Cover: Knovum canvas with sources, reasoning and cited answer (official project screenshot, github.com/madebyzan/knovum).