Welcome to Ink & Key!
Hello one and all! We here at the Ink & Key team (all two of us) are super excited to share with you a little about our story, our mission, and where we hope to go in the future. And now, I hand the keyboard over to the little bird sitting in the tree that we hired to narrate our story.
Thank you, Jack. Our story begins with Joe, who had wanted to start a company for years. The hard part was finding a good idea. The even harder part was finding a good idea he’d actually enjoy working on. There were twists. There were turns. At one point he wanted to have ontologies stacked on several planes, with edges connecting nodes across the planes, so engineering, sales and marketing could all talk about the same product from their own points of view. (This bird nodded along and understood none of it. Joe is still workshopping that one, and he has officially invoked the sacred right of “dibs.”)
Eventually it all boiled down to one wish: “I want a place where I can put my files, forget about them, and ask AI to find them, and maybe keep things organized along the way.” Joe knew his small/mid-sized company clients well, and this looked like a B2B slam dunk. He’d also worked on plenty of data and AI projects, so there was an obvious solution: hand everything over to one of the big AI companies. But the obvious solution felt awful. Give Big Tech and Big AI more of his data, more of his money, more of HIMSELF? No, thank you.
Then a better idea fluttered in. “Hang on. I’ve built little apps with local AI before. Why don’t I just do it again? And I know there are tons of people out there who feel the same way.” After lots and lots of tinkering, the idea finally took shape: a private, offline AI app that lives on your own computer and keeps your notes, tasks and files in order.
Joe approached Jack and explained his idea to him. He knew that a consumer app needed to have a distinct design feeling. Business applications can get away with terrible interfaces, but people would not put up with that. He new that Jack understood design and had a talent for it. Jack was immediately taken with the whole idea of the app. When Joe asked him if he wanted to help with bug testing and possibly becoming a referral partner, Jack wholeheartedly agreed. Details were argued, plans were discussed, negotiations were negotiated, and eventually Joe and Jack toasted to their new partnership at a local Korean BBQ.
The next month was a flurry of activity. Bugs needed to be found and exterminated. Designs needed to be polished, scrapped, redesigned, and polished again. Keys were made, web pages were written, features were added, people were contacted. All of the stuff was stuffed, and slowly but surely Ink & Key came together.
Finally, early in the morning on November 1st, Ink & Key became officially available for purchase! Champagne, cigars, fancy dinners—just kidding, they immediately got back to work. Apps don’t grow themselves, you know. In the upcoming months, Joe and Jack plan to bring Ink & Key to mobile devices and the Mac, and hopefully even Linux! And, of course, they are hard at work tightening bolts and shining surfaces.
-
AI is a big thing. You know it, we know it, everyone knows it. The question is, how can we use AI responsibly and in a way that actually improves our lives? There are a few different things to watch out for when it comes to using AI, but the one we want to focus on today, and the area that Ink & Key is designed to help most with, is PRIVACY and OWNERSHIP.
As powerful as big AI is, it isn’t private and you don’t own it. Well, at least, not really. If you upload all of your sensitive information to a big AI, you have only their word that your files are secure and that they aren’t using them for their own purposes. And even though no big company has ever lied about anything ever before, we here at Ink & Key aren’t satisfied with this.
That’s why our AI, the Librarian, lives entirely on your device and NEVER sends your files anywhere. You don’t have to take our word for it; unplug your router and see that nothing breaks. Also, when you buy the app you actually own it. While we think that we will earn your renewals through excellent support, upgrades, and new features, we won’t ever “turn off your own property.” We want to bring the immense power and usefulness of AI and put it into your hands, and your hands only.
Ink & Key is like your own personal digital filing cabinet. Everything that you want to keep safe and organized you can put into Ink & Key, and then you can use the Librarian to do the sorting for you. Not only that, but the Librarian can find any file you might want to search for. How much was that quote from the plumber? What book did my mom recommend in that email she sent last month? How many times do I mention crabapples in my nightly journal? The Librarian will tell you, and you don’t have to worry that anyone else will find out about your obsession with crabapples.
Even better than that, you have the option to encrypt your files in Ink & Key. This makes them impossible to read except by you! If someone does snag one of your sensitive folders, all they get is gibberish. The ink is yours, and so is the key.
This is all well and good, but what if I want a more powerful, albeit less secure, AI to help with a project? Do I need to leave the wonderful land of Ink & Key to accomplish my goals? Despair not, my friend! Ink & Key has an Annex, designed specifically with you in mind! This is a separate folder, to which you can share bookcases, shelves, files, folders, notes, anything you want. Just point the AI of your choice at this folder and off you go. And you can remove things from the Annex whenever you want as well. Change your mind about that diary entry? Out it goes, back into the safety of the Library.
Looking towards the future, we are going to continue to refine Ink & Key and increase its functionality. The Librarian will continue to be tuned and become even more powerful. It is always a balancing act between accuracy and ability when you are trying to run an LLM on a ThinkPad (no offense to ThinkPads).
You can expect more ways to be able to organize and visualize your data, support for more file types under semantic search, audio support, and a company that actually loves its own product and listens to its users.
We are so excited about Ink & Key. We think that it will revolutionize the private AI game, making AI models easier to use and much more accessible for everyone, all without risking any of your sensitive information. We hope that you join us on our journey, and we can’t wait to see where the road leads next!