Seamside
A workspace that runs on your devices, not our servers.
Two of us (Small Craft, founded early 2026) just launched Seamside: a collaborative creative workspace where every byte lives on the users' own devices. No central server, no accounts, no storage tier.
What it is: you open a space (a shared canvas), press Cmd+K, and drop in frames — small sandboxed apps. Notes, whiteboards, chat, games, or ones you build yourself in the built-in Frame Workshop. Spaces and tables (shared live-syncing datasets) sync peer-to-peer between members. Works offline; reconciles when you reconnect.
The stack decision that shaped everything: identity is a keypair on your own machine, sync is CRDTs over direct encrypted connections, storage is encrypted SQLite. That removed signup, password reset, session management, and the entire hosting bill — and in exchange we had to solve NAT traversal, multi-device identity, and permission enforcement on the host device rather than in a UI layer. Roughly the same total work, but the ongoing cost curve is flat instead of linear in users.
What that buys the user:
Share a frame or a whole space to anyone via link — opens in their browser, no install for the visitor. Turn it off and access dies on their next request.
Mark a frame CC0 and anyone in the space can clone it to their own machine and remix it.
Move a running frame — data folder and all — to another of your devices; every existing share link keeps resolving.
Want always-on? Same binary, headless, on a 512 MB VPS. Zero inbound ports, one-line install, signed self-updates with auto-rollback.
The honest part: it's free, there are no ads, and we don't hold any user data — which means the obvious SaaS monetization paths are all closed by construction. That was deliberate, and it's also the open question we're still working through. We shipped first because a platform like this is worth nothing unmade.
Free on Mac / Windows / Linux, mobile coming. Would love feedback from this crowd — especially on the business model, and on where local-first breaks down for you.
1 Comment
The interesting tradeoff here is that removing the server removes both the cost problem and many traditional SaaS monetization paths.
The technology is compelling, but the bigger question may be what users are willing to pay for when ownership is the core value proposition.