Research agent wants access
- Folder
- /research
- Access
- read only
- Duration
- 60 minutes
- Other folders
- not visible
Only /research is visible.
Your data doesn’t need another place to live.
Software should come to it.
Groundware lets tools request access to the files, notes, folders and context you already control, without becoming the place that owns everything. Your notes stay where they are, and tools only see what you allow.
Your data stays yours
Closer to you than the cloud.
Groundware starts from the files and notes people already control. For Obsidian, that means your notes stay markdown and your vault stays recognisable.
A tool can ask for one folder without ever seeing the rest of the vault.
Read how a grant is scopedyour-data
notes stay markdown folders are shared by choice tools only see what you allow access can expire history stays visibleHow access works
Tools ask before they touch your data.
Groundware shows what a tool is asking for, what it can reach, how long the grant lasts, and what it did afterwards.
- 01A tool asks
- 02You see the scope
- 03You allow, deny or revoke
- 04The action is logged
- research agent requested access
- access granted to /research for 60 minutes
- research agent read 4 notes
- access expired
Routes
One ground. Many routes.
Routes are different ways for software to come to user-owned data. They are not separate places to put everything.
your data home
Yours
One place to see your data, the tools connected to it, every live grant, and the log of what they did.
for developersGround SDK
Build apps, plugins, agents and integrations that request scoped access to user-owned context.
first route
Ground for Obsidian
Start with the vault people already use. Notes stay markdown, and tools ask before they read.
Start free. Move when you outgrow it.
(Same ground either way — there is nothing to migrate.)
Free
No card needed
10 GB/ ground storage
2/ synced devices
30 days/ log history
1/ shared vault
50/ grants a day
3/ agents at once
60 min/ longest grant
0/ standing grants
2/ synced devices
1 GB/ synced a day
unlimited/ local reads
7 days/ offline window
Ground
From $6 a month
$0.09/ GB a month
$0.00/ read to your devices
500 GB/ included
1 year/ log history
$0.02/ thousand grants
unlimited/ agents at once
no cap/ longest grant
25/ standing grants
unlimited/ synced devices
$0.01/ GB synced
unlimited/ local reads
no cap/ offline window
Principles
Three things we will not trade away.
Everything else in the product is negotiable. These are the commitments the architecture is built around, and the reason it is built the way it is.
Sovereignty
Nothing is copied to a server you cannot see. Payloads are encrypted on your device and the platform holds ciphertext, so there is no copy of your work that we could read, sell, train on, or be compelled to hand over. If Groundware disappears tomorrow, every file you have is still sitting where it was, in the format it was already in.
Versioning
Every write creates a new version rather than overwriting the last one. Earlier states are kept, and any of them can be restored without asking a tool to undo what it did. A grant that turned out to be a mistake is recoverable, not just revocable.
Integrity
Each version is content addressed and checksummed. A file that has been damaged in transit, truncated by a failed sync, or altered by something that should not have touched it is detected on read rather than quietly propagated over the good copy.
Granular control
A grant covers a path, not a vault. It carries a level, read only or read and write, and nothing outside that path is readable or even enumerable. A tool that asks for one project folder cannot discover that the others exist.
Duration
Grants lapse on their own. A duration is part of the request, not a setting buried later, and when it runs out the tool has to ask again. Revoking takes effect on the next request rather than at the end of a session.
History
Every request, decision, read, write and expiry is written to your own storage in plain text. It is searchable, exportable and archivable with the rest of your files, and nothing is summarised away or retained on our side.
A declared shape
A context is a folder with a structure written down: the fields a tool can expect to find, and the ones it is allowed to add. That is enough for an agent to work in it without a bespoke integration for every product.
Universal
The same context serves an editor, an agent, a script and a colleague. Knowledge stops being re-entered once per application, and a tool you adopt next year reads what you wrote in one you dropped last year.
Still just files
Underneath, a context is ordinary files in ordinary folders. You can move it, back it up, open it in something else, or walk away from the structure entirely without a migration.
Private beta
Software can be useful without taking the whole space.
We are opening the first ground routes soon. Leave an address and we will tell you when private beta access is ready. One message, no list.
Get notified