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Rowboat Desktop is a local-first AI coworker that builds a knowledge graph from your work and helps you act on it. Everything runs privately on your machine - your emails, meetings, and notes stay under your control.

What is Rowboat Desktop?

Rowboat Desktop connects to your email and meeting notes, builds a long-lived knowledge graph, and uses that context to help you:
  • Draft emails grounded in past conversations and commitments
  • Prep for meetings with briefs that include prior decisions and open questions
  • Create presentations as PDF slides using context from your work
  • Track projects with memory that compounds over time
  • Record voice memos that automatically update your knowledge graph
Unlike AI tools that reconstruct context on demand, Rowboat maintains long-lived knowledge that accumulates over time. Context isn’t retrieved - it’s already there.

Key Benefits

Private by Default

All data stored locally as plain Markdown. No cloud storage required.

Memory That Compounds

Context accumulates across emails and meetings, not reconstructed each time.

Bring Your Own Model

Works with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Ollama, and OpenAI-compatible APIs.

Obsidian Compatible

Knowledge graph stored as Markdown with backlinks you can edit anytime.

How It Works

1

Connect Your Work

Link Gmail, Google Calendar, and meeting note services (Granola, Fireflies, Google Meet).
2

Build the Knowledge Graph

Rowboat extracts people, projects, organizations, and topics into Markdown notes with backlinks.
3

Get Help with Context

Ask Rowboat to draft emails, prep meetings, create docs - all grounded in your accumulated memory.
4

Inspect and Edit

Open the knowledge graph in Obsidian or any text editor. All notes are yours to modify.

Supported Platforms

  • macOS - Apple Silicon and Intel
  • Windows - Windows 10 and later
  • Linux - AppImage and deb packages
Download the latest version from rowboatlabs.com/downloads

Integrations

Rowboat Desktop builds memory from:
  • Gmail - Email threads and conversations
  • Google Calendar - Meeting schedules and attendees
  • Google Meet - Meeting transcripts and recordings
  • Granola - AI-powered meeting notes
  • Fireflies - Meeting transcription service

What Makes Rowboat Different

Most AI assistants start cold every session, searching documents and transcripts to reconstruct context. Rowboat maintains long-lived knowledge:
  • Context accumulates over time across all interactions
  • Relationships between people, projects, and topics are explicit
  • Notes are editable by you, not hidden inside a model
  • Everything lives on your machine as plain Markdown files
The result is memory that compounds, rather than retrieval that starts from scratch.

Next Steps

Explore Features

Learn about AI assistance, knowledge graph, and background agents

Configure Models

Set up OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Ollama, or local models

Understand Workspace

Explore the ~/.rowboat/ directory structure

Install the App

Download Rowboat for Mac, Windows, or Linux

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