Kompas

Kompas is a thinking environment that captures ideas, connects past sessions into a graph, and helps write drafts based on personal notes.

Kompas is a desktop app designed to capture reading, conversations, and half-formed ideas, turning them into connected work. Users start sessions with a topic to think through problems, drawing on past notes to ask better questions and build a knowledge graph. It supports documents, highlights, voice notes, and web pages as inputs, and generates drafts and graphs as outputs. The platform integrates with OpenAI, Anthropic, Claude Code, Codex, and Ollama for local models. It is built for essayists, researchers, founders, and Obsidian or Logseq users who want their ideas to grow. What sets it apart is local-first data storage on Free plans, open-source code under the MIT license, and privacy guarantees ensuring user content is never used to train models.

Kompas at a glance

Best for: Writer, Researcher
Runs on: macOS, Windows
Pricing: Free plan; Pro Sync and Pro Full available with 7-day free trial
Released: December 2023
Category: AI productivity tool
Website: kompas.ai

Key features

Capture documents, highlights, voice notes, and web pages
Create thought sessions linked to past notes and decisions
Build a connected knowledge graph from past sessions
Draft writing using past work and personal thoughts
Bring your own API keys for OpenAI or Anthropic
Run local models via Ollama
Export everything to JSON anytime
Cross-device sync between desktops on Pro plans

Use it for

Drafting essays carrying personal arguments
Conducting continuous research and connecting concepts
Tracking past decisions and reasons for founders
Building on collected material for Obsidian and Logseq users

Alternatives to Kompas

Basic Memory — Stores data in local Markdown files that remain accessible and readable by any AI.
Blinko — Capture messy thoughts, expand them with AI, and publish notes.
Earnote — Local transcription and AI generation keep recordings and data private on device.
Reflect Open — Owns all data as plain Markdown files without proprietary database formats.
Smart Connections — Finds related notes locally by default without requiring an API key.
Karakeep — Provides AI-based automatic tagging and semantic search for saved content.
SiYuan — Privacy-first personal knowledge management with local storage and block-based editing.
Surf — It combines local data storage with flexible AI model integration.
NoteGen — It keeps notes in local Markdown files and runs completely free with no subscription.
ThinkBoard — Edit Obsidian canvases instantly from a dashboard overlay above your desktop.
Karpathy LLM Wiki — Maintains a compounding markdown knowledge base instead of re-searching raw documents.
PenEcho — Connects AI tools directly to an infinite spatial canvas via the PenEcho MCP server.

All Kompas alternatives