Lore
Cursor for your memory. 100% private, open-source & free.
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Erez Shahaf

Lore - Cursor for your memory. 100% private, open-source & free.

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Lore is a lightweight "second brain" that lives in your system tray. Summon it with a keystroke to capture ideas, notes, or tasks instantly. Why Lore? 🛡️ 100% Private: Your data never leaves your machine. No API keys, no tracking. 🧠 Local AI: Powered by Ollama + LanceDB for secure, offline-first RAG. ⚡ Instant Recall: Ask questions in plain language and get answers from your own history. Own your memory. 100% local. Zero cloud.

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Erez Shahaf
Maker
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Hey Product Hunt! 👋 I’m Erez, the creator of Lore. I built Lore because I was tired of the "Privacy Tax." In 2026, if you want an AI that actually understands your thoughts, you're usually forced to upload your entire life to a cloud provider. I didn't want my private ideas, snippets, and daily journals sitting on someone else's server. I wanted a "Cursor for my memory": ⚡ Speed: Summon it with one keystroke (Cmd+Shift+Space). 🛡️ Privacy: 100% local. No API keys, no tracking, no cloud. 🧠 Intelligence: It uses Ollama and LanceDB to actually answer your questions using your own history. Whether you're a researcher, a dev, or just someone who thinks a lot—Lore is designed to stay out of your way until you need to remember something perfectly. Lore is 100% Free and Open Source. I believe the tools we use to think should be transparent and owned by the user. I'd love your feedback on: What "Source" should I support next? (Local Markdown? Browser history? WhatsApp?) How does the "Local LLM" setup feel on your machine? I’ll be here all day to answer questions! Let's take our memory back from the cloud. 🛡️ — Erez
Akshay Kumar

This is a thoughtful direction. The idea of having an AI that understands your own notes and history is powerful, but the privacy concern is exactly what stops a lot of people from fully trusting these tools. Keeping everything local makes the whole product feel much more convincing.

Curious, what kind of users are connecting with Lore the fastest so far, people using it for work knowledge or more personal thinking and journaling?

Erez Shahaf
Maker

@akshay_kumar_hireid 

Appreciate that, that’s exactly the problem I felt too.

Up until today I have only shared it within my group of developer friends, and due to the nature of it being open source and available through GitHub I would expect that at least at the beginning it will be mostly for tech savvy users.

But I can definitely see people use it more like a thinking space for journaling, planning, just dumping thoughts and then querying them later. I think that’s where it gets really powerful once people trust it.

Nayan Surya

ngl the "privacy tax" line hits. a lot of note and memory tools sound cool till you realize you’re basically handing over your whole brain to some cloud service. keeping it free, local and open-source makes this feel way more honest.

also curious, what made you choose the system tray quick capture style instead of going for a bigger full app first?

Erez Shahaf
Maker

@nayan_surya98 

haha yeah that’s exactly the feeling I had

I went with the tray + quick capture approach because I didn’t want it to feel like “opening another app to do work”. The goal is more like: it’s always there, you drop things into it quickly, and move on.

Van de Vouchy
Hey Erez, that phrase Privacy Tax is a good way to put it. Was there a specific moment where you were about to save something personal to a cloud-based tool and just stopped?
Erez Shahaf
Maker

@vouchy 

Hey. Yeah, honestly it wasn’t one big moment, it was a pattern. I’d write something personal or even just messy/raw thinking, and there was always that small hesitation before hitting send or save.

That hesitation is what I call the “privacy tax”, it changes how you think and what you’re willing to store. Lore is basically my attempt to remove that completely while improving the UX of knowledge management software, with a completely free and transparent product.

Sai Tharun Kakirala

Love seeing more open-source approaches to personal knowledge management! The privacy angle is huge right now, especially with AI reading our notes. How are you handling syncing across devices while keeping everything 100% private?