StashBase is an open-source, local-first writing workspace. You brainstorm, draft and revise with Claude Code or Codex beside your own sources, and your documents stay ordinary files on your computer. It is free and runs on macOS, Windows and Linux. The code is on GitHub.
What local-first means here
Your files stay in their folders on your computer. Browsing, editing, file preparation and keyword search work without a cloud account. The model is not local: Claude Code and Codex send prompts through the provider account you already have, and the built-in Default Agent uses StashBase's hosted model gateway. Search by meaning stays off until you add your own OpenAI or OpenRouter key. What local-first means in StashBase lists what stays on your computer and what leaves.
Is StashBase free?
Yes. StashBase is free and open source under Apache 2.0. Claude Code and Codex run on the subscription you already pay for. If you have neither, sign in to use the built-in Default Agent, which comes with free credits. See the FAQ for how it compares with Obsidian and NotebookLM.
Who we are
Bing Wu works on StashBase full-time and writes most of this blog, using Claude Code and Codex inside StashBase for the research and drafts. The posts come from using these tools first-hand, with the prompts, numbers and sources shown. Bing was previously a machine learning engineer at Waymo and holds a master’s in computer science from Carnegie Mellon. GitHub · LinkedIn · X
Li Liu leads vector database work at Zilliz, the company behind the open-source vector database Milvus. That retrieval background shapes how StashBase prepares and searches files for agents. Li holds a master’s in computer science from Carnegie Mellon. GitHub · LinkedIn
We are married, and agents, retrieval and writing are the three things we keep coming back to, which is roughly what StashBase is made of. Around us is a small team that works agent-first: Claude Code and Codex do much of the drafting, in code and in prose, and people decide what ships.
Why we built it
When you can build a tool with AI in a week, it is hard to go back to writing articles by hand. But the articles AI wrote for us felt bland and empty, and the places we tried to write in got in the way. In a chat window, notes, decisions and versions end up mixed into one long conversation. VS Code works with Claude Code and Codex, but it is not a comfortable place to read and edit prose. A notes app like Obsidian reads well, but you choose and configure the AI plugins yourself.
We wanted a document app where the agent we already pay for works next to the brief, the sources and the current draft, so we built one. Bing's account of the method is in How to Write with AI Without Losing Your Voice.
How we write
The blog is written with AI, the way that article describes: the ideas and the edits are ours, and the agent helps with research and drafts. We check product facts against official sources and date the check, show the prompts and numbers behind a test, and say so when we recommend our own product. Founder-Led SEO explains why we write it ourselves.
Contact
Email bingwu@stashbase.ai, join the Discord, or open an issue on GitHub. Demos are on YouTube. What the app and this site collect is on the privacy page.