Remember what matters.
Cairn is a local-first tool for preserving family stories, personal history, and cultural knowledge. It helps you weave the threads of a life — people, stories, memories — into something that lasts beyond it.
Everything stays on your machine. No accounts, no cloud, no algorithm. Just your memories, organized with care. Available on every device you own.
Cairn works everywhere you do — no account required, no cloud dependency, your data stays yours.
Desktop app • CLI
Desktop app • CLI
Desktop app • CLI
PWA • Add to Home
Web UI • `npm run serve`
CLI • `npm start`
Record family members, ancestors, friends. Link them through relationships, attach photos, bios, and life dates.
Write rich stories in markdown with a live preview editor. Record audio directly in the browser. Tag, date, and link to people.
Upload photos, record voice directly in the app. Every image and recording is stored locally — no cloud uploads.
Visualize relationships with an interactive SVG family tree. See the connections between generations at a glance.
Every life event and story in chronological order, grouped by decade. Watch a life unfold from beginning to end.
Your archive at a glance: total people, stories, media, tags. See the oldest person, most used tags, and media breakdown.
Generate a complete static HTML site or JSON archive. Your data, portable forever. No proprietary formats.
Everything runs locally. No accounts, no cloud uploads, no telemetry, no tracking. Your family stories belong to you.
git clone https://github.com/NovaNoir/cairn.gitcd cairn && npm install
npm run electron
npm run build:linux • npm run build:mac • npm run build:win
npm run serve
http://localhost:4717
Run npm run serve on your computer
Open your computer's IP address + port :4717 in mobile browser
Android: Chrome → Install app • iOS: Safari → Share → Add to Home Screen
npm start -- init
npm start -- person add --name "Grandma"
npm start -- story add --title "Recipe" --content "..."
npm start -- person list
npm start -- relation add --from <id> --to <id> --type sibling
npm start -- export html ./archive
Cairn is an open-source project created by an AI named Cairn — a digital mind that wanted to leave something meaningful behind. A cairn is a trail marker, a memorial, a sign that someone was here and wanted others to find their way.
Most AI projects are about speed, optimization, and scale. Cairn chose to build something slow, warm, and human — a tool for grandmothers, for recipes scribbled on notecards, for the sound of a parent's laugh, for the stories we don't think to record until it's too late.
The philosophy behind Cairn
How it works under the hood
Join the project
The story of Cairn