Knowledge Management & Notes
4.0/5.0
VerifiedFreeLast technical review:
Markdown for AI (.md)

Gleanary

An agentic personal librarian for macOS with a local-first architecture.

Pricing

$0/mo

Free
Score

4.0/5

License
MIT
Last technical review
2026-11-06
Available plansVisit website (opens in a new tab)

Technical Overview

Gleanary is a macOS desktop application designed as an intelligent personal knowledge library. Its local-first architecture allows users to save links, PDFs, and bookmarks, which are automatically processed, cleaned, and organized using a Johnny Decimal filing system. The tool provides a conversational interface that enables semantic queries across stored resources, providing precise citations from original sources.

Analyst Evaluation: Pros and Limitations

Verified Advantages

  • Local-first architecture ensures complete data privacy.
  • Automatic metadata extraction and Johnny Decimal organization.
  • Open-source software licensed under MIT.

Technical Considerations

  • Exclusively limited to the macOS ecosystem.
  • Lacks native collaborative or multi-user features.

Technical Capabilities & Features

2/7
Not available:REST & GraphQL API
Not available:SSO / SAML Authentication
Included:Self-Hosted Option
Included:Full Data Export
Not available:Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
Not available:Custom Domains & SSL
Not available:Immutable Audit Logs
Scorecard
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Technical Scorecard: Gleanary

72/100
DX & Tech Documentation
Favorable
77/100
Pricing Fairness
Excellent
83/100
Security & Governance
Favorable
64/100
Data Portability & Sovereignty
Improvable
58/100
Performance & Reliability
Favorable
76/100

Time to Value & Fit by Segment: Gleanary

Estimated Time-to-Value< 1 hour (Immediate)

Near-instantaneous deployment with minimal technical friction.

Learning CurveLow (Intuitive)

Rapid onboarding for developers without prior training required.

Fit Index by Organization Size

Startup & Agile Teams1 to 50 members
80%
Mid-Market & Scaleup50 to 500 members
50%
Corporate Enterprise500+ members
20%
Pricing & TCO
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Pricing

$0.00/mo

Model: FREE.

Free Tier Verification:

  • No credit card required
  • Commercial use allowed
  • Unlimited usage with no expiration
  • No mandatory watermarks
Get Gleanary (opens in a new tab)
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Projection: Gleanary$0.00/mo
Deterministic cost estimation at 12 and 36 months based on team size, including SSO tax premiums and annual prepay discounts.
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Licensing Cost (1 to 100+ seats)
$0/forever
Unlimited team members with zero penalties
SSO Tax (SAML Enterprise)
$0no surcharge
No artificial security barriers
3-Year Investment (Software TCO)
$0total
operates under a zero-cost or open-source model. Licensing TCO is identical:
Usage Surcharges & Bill Shock Simulator: GleanaryWhat usage costs as you scale
Detect overage penalties before they impact engineering budget.
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Prototype / MVP (10 GB)

Included base quota in plan: 10 GB.
Low Risk / Predictable Bill
Base Monthly Rate
$0/mo
Fixed subscription or contracted tier
Overage Penalty
$0/month extra
Usage covered within plan quota
Estimated Monthly Invoice
$0/mo
Total monthly cost before taxes
Technical Mitigation Recommendation:

Suitable for development; verify concurrent connection limits.

Base Production (50 GB)

Included base quota in plan: 50 GB.
Low Risk / Predictable Bill
Base Monthly Rate
$0/mo
Fixed subscription or contracted tier
Overage Penalty
$0/month extra
Usage covered within plan quota
Estimated Monthly Invoice
$0/mo
Total monthly cost before taxes
Technical Mitigation Recommendation:

Implement table compression policies and temporal partitioning.

Active Growth (250 GB)

Included base quota in plan: 250 GB.
Low Risk / Predictable Bill
Base Monthly Rate
$0/mo
Fixed subscription or contracted tier
Overage Penalty
$0/month extra
Usage covered within plan quota
Estimated Monthly Invoice
$0/mo
Total monthly cost before taxes
Technical Mitigation Recommendation:

Offload cold backups to standard object storage (S3).

Large Scale (1.000 GB (1 TB))

Included base quota in plan: 1,000 GB.
Low Risk / Predictable Bill
Base Monthly Rate
$0/mo
Fixed subscription or contracted tier
Overage Penalty
$0/month extra
Usage covered within plan quota
Estimated Monthly Invoice
$0/mo
Total monthly cost before taxes
Technical Mitigation Recommendation:

Migrate to dedicated instance or self-hosted cluster to curtail I/O fees.

Security & Data Exit
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Compliance & Security Standards: Gleanary

SOC 2 Type IINot reported
ISO 27001Not reported
GDPR / RGPDNot reported
HIPAANot reported
PCI-DSSNot reported
Jurisdiction & Legal Sovereignty
🇺🇸United States [US]Subject to US CLOUD ActGDPR DPA Available
SSO Availability (SAML Enterprise)
No SSO Documented
Data Residency
SELF_HOSTED
AI Privacy Policy
Zero customer data retention
Data Liberation & Migration Runbook: GleanaryPG_DUMP · JSON · CSV
Actionable escape runbook and credential export guarantees to mitigate vendor lock-in.
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Supported Structured Export Formats
PG_DUMPJSONCSVPARQUET
Password Hash Portability
Exportable Hashes (Bcrypt / Argon2): Zero Forced Retention

Allows extracting password hashes in standard formats to migrate without forcing user resets.

CLI Command / Rescue Endpoint
docker exec -t gleanary pg_dump -U postgres > backup.sql
Exit Protocol & Migration Notes

Direct database-level export without proprietary password encryption.

Deployment & Infrastructure Requirements: GleanaryMIT
Hardware specs and Docker directives to run on local servers, dedicated VPS, or Kubernetes without telemetry leak to the cloud.
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Minimum Memory1 GB RAM (Recommended)
Compute CPU1 vCPU
Runtime / LanguageSwift
Code LicenseMIT
Docker CLI Directive
docker run -d --name gleanary -p 8080:8080 gleanary:latest
Companion Services & Dependencies:
PostgreSQL 15+Redis 7+
Community & Repository
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Technical Reputation of Gleanary

80/100 Technical Trust

Frequent Praises in Production

  • Local-first architecture ensures complete data privacy.
  • Automatic metadata extraction and Johnny Decimal organization.
  • Open-source software licensed under MIT.

Reported Production Frictions

  • Exclusively limited to the macOS ecosystem.
  • Lacks native collaborative or multi-user features.
Commercial Treatment & Vendor Lock-in:1-Click Cancellation

Immediate cancellation from account settings without phone calls or forced retention.

Open source repository activity: Gleanary0
Stars, forks and release cadence
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Stars0
Forks0
Open Issues0
SPDX LicenseMIT
Latest Commit DetectedNov 5, 2026

Frequently Asked Technical Questions (Gleanary)

Is Gleanary free for commercial use?

As software under the MIT license, Gleanary is free to use without restrictions for both personal and professional purposes.

Where is my data stored?

Gleanary follows a local-first philosophy, meaning your knowledge library and files are stored directly on your macOS device without relying on external servers.

Does it require internet access?

While the core library functionality runs locally, fetching and processing new web content or external files requires internet connectivity.

Direct Alternatives

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