Why Vizsla?
Loyal. Dependable.
And we are both made of Rust.
A vizsla is a working dog that learns one household deeply and stays close. This system is built the same way: one operating system that learns your life once — your people, your papers, your hours, your bills — and then carries it in every shape you need, instead of making you teach five different gadgets five different versions of you. No account. No subscription. Your files stay on your machine, in formats you can read without us.
So the honest question isn’t “why another operating system?” It’s what does it do for a life like yours? Pick the life that’s yours, and look.
The honest status: Vizsla OS is in active development. Everything below is a real program inside it today — described the way it actually works, partials and all.
I am a…
Start with the files
Fable Files: every folder built the same way, every time
Almost every life below runs on the same raw material: folders full of folders, and files you will need to find again in a hurry. Fable Files is Vizsla’s file manager, and it was built for exactly that material — a structure you set up once, kept faithfully without you.
Folder templates
Set up a folder once — for an employee, a student, a client, a project — and Fable stamps the identical tree of subfolders every time after: same names, same order, same starter files inside. Build a template blank, start from a starter, or point Fable at a folder you already like and say like this. However you choose to label and organize them, the hundredth folder matches the first.
Why it beats the usual way: the usual way is copying last month’s folder and deleting the wrong person’s papers out of it — or rebuilding the structure from memory, slightly different, every single time, until nobody knows which version is real.
Kept sorted, automatically
Point Fable’s Organize at a pile and it files movies, shows, and games into their proper places — preview first, every move journaled and undoable. And Auto-Label rules tag files by your rules as they arrive, so the sorting keeps happening the way you set it up instead of decaying the first busy week.
Why it beats the usual way: a folder system that depends on you remembering it, at 9 p.m., during the rush, isn’t a system — it’s a hope. This one shows its plan before it moves a single file, and keeps the receipt.
Color labels
Color tags for the folders and documents that matter: mark the urgent ones, the tax ones, the do-not-lose ones, and the color rides the item’s icon in every view. Your words, your colors — the starter set is only a start, and rules can apply labels for you.
Why it beats the usual way: importance stops living in filenames like FINAL_v2_REAL.pdf and in your head. The folder that matters looks like it matters, from across the room, to anyone who opens the drive.
A spelling checker for file names
Fable’s File Auditor hunts the names themselves: a real word spelled wrong in an otherwise ordinary name gets flagged, with a “did you mean.” It checks against a real dictionary bundled in the app, learns the family names and project words you confirm — and leaves hashes and ID strings alone on purpose, because those aren’t typos.
Why it beats the usual way: a mistyped folder name is a file you will never find by searching for what it should have been called. The Auditor catches the typo while you still remember what the folder was.
A duplicate finder
The same file saved twice — or five times — eats space and breeds doubt about which copy is real. The Duplicate Finder compares contents, not just names, and shows you the twins before you choose; the File Auditor flags the space-wasters again on its own rounds.
Why it beats the usual way: drives fill up with copies of copies, and deleting the wrong twin is the fear that keeps them all. Contents don’t lie: what’s identical is identical, shown side by side.
Sniff Search
One search for the whole machine: your programs and every file on it, found by name in one breath — and when Sniff answers from the web, it names its sources instead of asking you to trust a summary. No profile of you is kept, because there is no account to keep one in.
Why it beats the usual way: the usual search sells your questions or forgets where your own files live. And the honest edge, said out loud: searching inside your files’ words — not just their names — is the index’s next build, specced and assigned. Today Sniff reads names, and says so.
All of it lives on your machine: the templates, the labels, the audits, and the index sit with your files, in formats you can read without us. No account, no upload, no rent on your own filing cabinet.
For parents: the household, handled in plain words
The school emails, the clinic forms, the papers nobody wants to think about until the day they’re urgent — Vizsla keeps them in one calm place, and says the quiet parts out loud.
Family Papers
Wills, powers of attorney, and health-care directives, prepared step by step with plain questions — your family’s papers in one place, your parents’ papers kept in their own section, never mixed.
Why it beats the usual way: the usual way is a shoebox, a lawyer’s hourly rate for a first draft, or nothing at all. Family Papers guides the preparation and prints a brief to take to a lawyer for the signing — and it says “this isn’t a lawyer” out loud, on every face, instead of pretending.
Elefunk
One calm inbox for the school, the clinic, and the family — plus a library of letters you’ve already written well, ready to send again.
Why it beats the usual way: no digging through three mail apps for the field-trip form, and no retyping the same polite note to the school office every September. The letter you wrote once, kindly, is yours forever.
Arrival
The first screen of the day: what’s on, what’s due, what needs you — at a glance, and nothing shouting.
Why it beats the usual way: a phone home screen is a slot machine of other people’s priorities. Arrival is a kitchen whiteboard that keeps itself — the day, calmly, and then it gets out of the way.
Vizsla Ferry
When the family gets new phones, Ferry gathers each phone’s texts, photos, contacts, and calendars into one sealed file and carries the life across — fully offline.
Why it beats the usual way: nobody signs a child up for a cloud account just to move house, and nobody’s family photos pass through a stranger’s server on the way. You carry the file; that’s the whole route. How Ferry works.
Island Vault — homework without the internet
An offline library stocked on the family machine: Wikipedia’s most-read articles, Simple English Wikipedia, a dictionary shelf — gathered as packs with their sizes and dates on the card. The essay gets researched at the kitchen table with the wifi off, and nothing about the question leaves the house.
Why it beats the usual way: the usual homework route is a browser full of ads, autoplay, and rabbit holes engineered to keep a ten-year-old scrolling. The Vault is a library with the door closed: the article is the whole page.
And underneath all of it: no child needs an account to use the family computer, nothing about your household is uploaded to be profiled, and when the internet is down the papers are still on the machine in the kitchen.
For teachers: your evenings back
The teaching is the job. The typing, retyping, and reading aloud until your voice gives out — that’s the tax. Vizsla pays less of it.
WordCraft · Dactylo, with Red Pen
Writing with a proofreader built into the page — spelling and grammar caught as you type, in the document itself.
Why it beats the usual way: the usual way is a grammar subscription bolted onto a word processor that rents itself back to you monthly. Red Pen is part of the system: no add-on, no account, no per-seat rent, and it works on the classroom’s worst wifi day — because it needs no wifi at all.
Scanner
A paper worksheet becomes text you can reuse — scan it once, and the words are yours to edit, enlarge, and reprint.
Why it beats the usual way: instead of retyping a worksheet at 9 p.m. because the original file is lost, or photocopying a photocopy until it greys out, you get clean text in seconds — and a big-print version for the student who needs one is a formatting change, not a project.
Reader
Reads texts aloud in eleven voices — the chapter gets finished even on the day your voice doesn’t.
Why it beats the usual way: no hunting for an audiobook version that doesn’t exist, no reading through a cold while thirty students wait. Press play; the story goes on, and your voice rests.
Elefunk’s Templates Library
The letters home — the field-trip reminder, the kind-but-firm note, the thank-you — written once, kept in a library, sent kindly forever.
Why it beats the usual way: every teacher rewrites the same five letters every year, from memory, at midnight. Here they live in one library, in your words, ready before the need is urgent.
Fable Files — a folder for every student
One folder per student, stamped from the same folder template, so the structure is identical for every child, every term: however you label them — hand-ins, assessments, family letters, notes — the thirtieth folder matches the first, and next year’s class is an afternoon of stamping, not an evening of folder-making.
Why it beats the usual way: the usual way is thirty almost-alike folder structures in a shared drive, each built from memory by a tired person in August. Same template, same shape, every time — and a student’s work is findable by the structure, not by remembering which spelling of their name the folder got.
Student names and family letters never leave the machine to make any of this work. There is no classroom dashboard somewhere keeping a copy — because there is no somewhere. The files are on your computer, in formats any computer can read.
For students: the library that works with the wifi down
School runs on references, drafts, and deadlines — usually through a browser tab that wants an account, a subscription, and a connection. Vizsla puts the reference shelf and the writing desk on the machine itself, so a dorm, a bus, or a house with the internet down is still a place you can work.
Island Vault — Wikipedia, offline
Wikipedia lives here as a library you stock on the machine: the most-read articles with their pictures, Simple English Wikipedia, the medicine shelf — each pack carded with its size and the date it was gathered — and a real dictionary on its own shelf beside them. All of it opens with the internet unplugged, because none of it is streamed.
Why it beats the usual way: the usual way is a search engine’s summary of a page it won’t show you offline, on a laptop that dies with the wifi. The Vault is the library itself, on your disk — no account, no ads, no “sign in to continue reading.”
WordCraft · Dactylo, with Red Pen
Reports and papers written in a word processor that’s part of the system — with Red Pen proofing in the page as you type, so spelling and grammar are caught in the document, not after the deadline.
Why it beats the usual way: the usual way rents you a word processor by the month and sells your own grammar back as an add-on. This one is installed, it’s yours, and the proofer needs no wifi because it never leaves the machine.
Reader — the free classics
Thousands of free classic books: a canon of Standard Ebooks already aboard, and Project Gutenberg’s whole shelf — tens of thousands of classics — bookmarked on Reader’s shelf, one tap to bring a book home. Once it’s home it stays: your place kept, highlights and notes in the margins, and eleven voices to read it aloud when your eyes give out.
Why it beats the usual way: the usual way is a book store that can reach into your library and take a title back. These are files on your machine — the dead authors can’t be delisted, and Dickens doesn’t need a subscription.
Note Paper
Class notes with the same Red Pen in the margin — quick pages for the lecture, the lab, the idea at 1 a.m., proofed as you write them.
Why it beats the usual way: notes usually live in whichever app was open, in a format nothing else reads. These are plain files on your machine, in the same family as your papers — findable by Sniff, readable forever.
No account to sign into, no subscription to lapse the night before the exam, nothing about what you’re studying uploaded anywhere. A student machine should work hardest exactly where the internet doesn’t.
For HR professionals: the paper trail, without the panic
Hiring is people. The rest of the week is portals, forms, hours, and letters — Vizsla keeps the machinery honest and the wording kind.
Fable Files — the employee folder, templated
Build the employee folder once, as a Fable Files folder template, and stamp it identically for every hire:
Application · Personal Action Form · Termination · Correspondence · Career Advancements · Taxes · Benefits · PTO · Worker’s Compensation · Disciplinary Actions · Awards and Recognition · Attendance
Why it beats the usual way: those twelve are one shop’s shape — label and organize yours however you choose. The point is that folder number one hundred is built exactly like folder number one, sorted the same way every time, with color labels for the folders that matter. When an auditor, a lawyer, or a regulator asks, every paper is where the structure says it lives — not where somebody’s memory put it in March.
Elefunk
Write one letter well and send it to a whole hiring class at once — each copy personal, sent at a human pace, and a send that’s interrupted resumes without ever double-writing a candidate. The Templates Library holds your offer and onboarding letters; a scam eyebrow marks inbound mail that smells wrong.
Why it beats the usual way: no mail-merge add-on subscription, no spreadsheet-of-doom, no “Dear [FIRSTNAME]” sent to four hundred people. And the resume that arrives with a phish inside gets flagged before you click, not after.
Hours Book
Hours with a start-and-stop clock that survives the app closing, and proof sheets for any period that hold up when someone asks.
Why it beats the usual way: timesheets reconstructed on Friday from memory and text messages are how good people get shorted. A clock that keeps its own time, and a sheet that prints the proof, ends the argument before it starts.
Scanner + Paper Trail
Paperwork that files itself into something searchable — the signed form goes in, and finding it again is a search, not an excavation.
Why it beats the usual way: the filing cabinet and the shared drive full of scan_final_v2.pdf both fail the same way: at audit time. Paper Trail keeps the paper and the finding in the same place.
Account Map
Every vendor portal, benefits platform, and payroll login your job touches — what it’s for, the sign-in name, and how you get back in when you’re locked out. Mapped, in plain words.
Why it beats the usual way: it is deliberately not a password vault — it stores no passwords at all. It’s the map a password manager can’t draw: which door, which key, and the recovery path, so a locked account is a ten-minute errand instead of a ticket to a vendor’s support queue.
Candidate data lives on your machine, in open formats — not in a recruiting cloud that keeps a copy after you cancel. Nothing here phones a vendor to ask permission to open your own files.
For restaurateurs: the dining room, run from the kitchen
Your tools should work during a Friday rush, with flour on your hands, on a machine you already own. That’s the design brief.
Menu Board
Your TV is your menu. Change a price or mark the soup gone, and the board in the dining room changes — served by the machine in your building.
Why it beats the usual way: the usual way rents you your own menu back, per screen, per month, through a vendor portal that goes down at 6 p.m. on a Friday. Menu Board has no portal and no rent: the file lives here, the TV reads it here.
Foodi
Recipes, planning, and the pantry in one place — what you cook, what it takes, and what’s actually on the shelf.
Why it beats the usual way: instead of three apps and a notebook, the recipe, the week’s plan, and the pantry count agree with each other — and none of them needs a subscription to remember what you already know.
Hours Book
Staff hours on a clock that keeps time even when the app is closed, with proof sheets per person and period.
Why it beats the usual way: a paper time book and a group chat full of shift photos are not a payroll record. When a paycheck is questioned, you print the sheet — kindly, completely, done.
Bills Calendar
Every biller the business has — rent, utilities, the linen service, the hood cleaning — on one calendar, with the month as one honest number and any bill that jumps flagged before it’s due.
Why it beats the usual way: a utility bill that quietly doubles shouldn’t be discovered by the bank balance. The calendar sees it coming and raises an eyebrow while there’s still time to argue.
Money Leaks
The subscriptions audit, inside the business books: every recurring charge in one list, one monthly total, and a pile for the ones you’ve stopped using.
Why it beats the usual way: every restaurant pays for something it cancelled in its heart two years ago. Money Leaks finds the drip — and drafts the cancellation letter when the vendor insists on one.
Claims Desk
When the supplier’s invoice is wrong — shorted cases, a doubled delivery charge, a price that isn’t the quoted price — Claims Desk lays the bill against the statement, shows the disagreement line by line, and drafts the dispute from the facts on the paper.
Why it beats the usual way: kitchen margins die in unargued invoices. Here the argument is already assembled, politely, from the two documents — you just send it.
A note on what this page won’t claim: Vizsla today is built for households and small shops, and its business shelf is young. What’s listed here is in the system and working — and none of it charges you monthly for the privilege of reading your own menu.
For plumbers: paperwork that keeps up with the truck
The work is in other people’s houses. The office is the cab, the kitchen table, and twenty minutes between calls. These are built for exactly that.
Hours Book
Billable hours on a clock you start at the curb and stop at the door — it keeps time even if you close the app — plus proof sheets, and mileage written out in the tax records’ own format.
Why it beats the usual way: hours scribbled on a parts receipt are hours you donate. A proof sheet per job means the invoice and the record are the same document — no Friday-night reconstruction, no arguing with a customer over a number you both have.
Elefunk’s Templates Library
The polite ladder of payment-chasing letters — friendly reminder, firmer note, final word — written once in your voice, sent in a minute each.
Why it beats the usual way: chasing a late invoice from a blank screen at 9 p.m. is nobody’s favorite hour. The ladder is already written; you climb it one kind step at a time, and the tone never says something at midnight you’d regret at breakfast.
Tax Shoebox
Tax papers filed all year as they arrive — receipts, invoices, the 1099s — each in its drawer, confirmed by you, and bundled into one verified package on hand-off day.
Why it beats the usual way: April panic is a filing system failing on schedule. The shoebox’s promise is on its face: it keeps the papers; it doesn’t do your taxes — and when your preparer asks, the bundle is ready instead of a grocery bag.
Scanner
Paperwork from the truck cab: the permit, the supplier invoice, the signed work order — scanned to clean text before you’ve left the driveway.
Why it beats the usual way: a photo of a form, lost in a camera roll of pipe fittings, is not a record. Scanned text is searchable, emailable, and still readable when the paper fades in the glovebox.
Bills Calendar
Truck payment, insurance, the supply-house account, the phone — every recurring bill on one calendar, jumps flagged, the month as one number.
Why it beats the usual way: it never pays a bill for you and never pretends to — it makes sure you see every bill coming, which is the part that actually goes wrong in a busy month.
Garage Log
The truck is the business: oil, tires, inspections, and repairs logged per vehicle, with what’s due next said in plain words — and the reminders land on the day screen before they’re emergencies.
Why it beats the usual way: a work truck that misses its own maintenance becomes the call you have to cancel. The log keeps the truck’s paperwork as faithfully as the customers’.
All of it works from the yard with no signal at all — the outbox, the clock, and the shoebox wait politely and catch up when you’re back in range. Nothing about your customers lives on anyone’s server.
For mechanics: every bay hour, provable
A good shop runs on trust and torque specs. The trust part dies in paperwork — estimates that drift, hours nobody wrote down, invoices argued over a month later. These keep the record as straight as the work.
Hours Book
Bay hours that prove themselves: a clock per job that survives the app closing, overnight work counted to the day it started, and a proof sheet for any job and period.
Why it beats the usual way: flat-rate vs. actual is the oldest argument in the trade, and it’s usually settled by whoever kept notes — which was nobody. Here the clock kept them, and the sheet settles it in one page.
Tax Shoebox
Parts invoices, tool receipts, the shop’s tax papers — offered the right drawer as each one arrives, all year, and exported as one verified bundle when your preparer asks.
Why it beats the usual way: a year of parts invoices in a milk crate is a deduction you’ll never take, because nobody can face sorting it. Filed on arrival, the crate never forms.
Bills Calendar
The lift lease, the diagnostic subscriptions, insurance, the parts accounts — one calendar, the month as one number, and a flag when a bill jumps.
Why it beats the usual way: shop bills arrive like weather — constant, and only noticed when something floods. Seeing them on one calendar, early, is the difference between a bill you planned for and a surprise with a due date.
Scanner
The paper that crosses the counter — signed authorizations, parts slips, inspection forms — scanned into searchable text on the spot.
Why it beats the usual way: “the customer signed it, it’s in the pile somewhere” loses disputes. A scanned, searchable authorization wins them, in the time it takes to type a name.
Elefunk
Estimates and follow-ups from templates — the ready-for-pickup note, the honest estimate letter, the service reminder — written once, sent in your words every time.
Why it beats the usual way: the front desk shouldn’t have to compose literature between phone calls. A template keeps the wording right and the tone steady, and the customer hears from the shop — not from a marketing platform’s robot.
Island Vault — the manuals shelf, offline
The Vault’s Fix It shelf carries the iFixit guides as a stocked pack — repair walkthroughs that open in the bay with the shop wifi down and grease on everything.
Why it beats the usual way: the usual way is a phone propped on the fender, buffering a video through a login wall. The guide is on the machine, full-size, and it doesn’t care about the signal.
Grease on the keyboard is fine — the shop’s records are plain files on the shop’s machine, readable without Vizsla, without an account, and without asking a vendor’s permission. If the internet dies mid-shift, the day doesn’t.
For electricians: the office fits in the truck
The work is on ladders and in crawlspaces. The business is estimates, hours, receipts, and permits — usually reconstructed at the kitchen table at 9 p.m. These move the office to where the work is.
Hours Book
A clock per job: start it at the panel, stop it at the door. It keeps time even if the app closes, counts overnight work to the day it started, and prints a proof sheet per job when an invoice is questioned. Mileage rides along, written out in the tax records’ own format.
Why it beats the usual way: hours remembered in the truck on the drive home are hours donated. A clock that kept its own time, and a sheet that proves it, turns the invoice argument into a one-page conversation.
Elefunk’s Templates Library
The estimate letter, the invoice note, and the polite ladder for the customer who hasn’t paid — friendly, firmer, final — written once in your words and sent in a minute each.
Why it beats the usual way: composing diplomacy from a blank screen after a ten-hour day is how good tradespeople end up sounding angry in writing. The ladder is already written; you climb it one kind step at a time.
Tax Shoebox
Supplier invoices, receipts, and the 1099s — offered the right drawer as each one arrives, all year, and bundled into one verified package on hand-off day.
Why it beats the usual way: a glovebox full of supply-house receipts is a deduction you’ll never take. The shoebox’s promise is printed on its face: it keeps the papers; it doesn’t do your taxes — and when your preparer asks, the bundle is ready.
Claims Desk
When a supplier bill is wrong — the wrong part, the doubled charge, the price that isn’t the price you were quoted — Claims Desk lays the bill against the statement, shows its work line by line, and drafts the dispute letter from the facts on the paper.
Why it beats the usual way: billing errors get paid by whoever can’t prove they’re errors. Here the disagreement is quoted from both documents, not argued from memory on a phone call.
Facts Vault
License number, insurance details, your EIN — the facts every permit form and supplier application demands — confirmed by you once, kept with their sources, and offered box by box when a form asks.
Why it beats the usual way: the license number is always in the other truck, the other wallet, the photo you can’t find. Here it’s a lookup — typed once, confirmed once, never re-hunted.
Permits, invoices, and customer details stay on your machine — no dispatch platform holds your customer list, and the whole office works at a job site with no signal at all. The panel doesn’t care about wifi. Neither do these.
For gamers: one box, a controller, the couch
The industry would like you to buy the same game room five times — a console, a streaming stick, a set-top box, a subscription for each. Vizsla’s answer is dumber and better: the box you already own, in the shape the moment needs.
Fable Files — open a ROM, it just plays
Your game files live in the same file manager as everything else — and Fable knows what they are. Open a ROM and Fable already knows its system and the right core to run it: the picks are proven defaults, kept by Fable, and you never choose an emulator from a list. ROM Home gathers the collection into shelves by system, and Play is one press from the file itself.
Why it beats the usual way: the usual way is three launcher apps, a core-picker dialog, and a forum post titled “which emulator for…” Here the figuring-out is the file manager’s job. It’s automagical because the machinery did the homework in advance.
Vydra — the big-screen library
When it’s couch time, Vydra fills the screen: a Rust-built game library in the Hydra tradition, made for Vizsla — your whole collection as one browsable wall, driven by a controller first (d-pad moves, A plays, B backs out). Twenty-three thousand games across thirteen classic systems on the shelf that proved it — NES to Nintendo 64, Jaguar, ScummVM — with Favorites and Recently Played shelves, so the old favorite is two presses away, and sources you add yourself for new arrivals.
Why it beats the usual way: the usual way is a mouse-and-keyboard launcher squinted at from ten feet away, or a console that only knows its own store. Vydra knows your disk: if it’s on the box, it’s on the wall, ready to play.
Box art & gameplay videos — the collection shines
A wall of grey boxes is a filing cabinet, not a collection. Fable’s game-media cascade hunts down box art, screenshots, and title screens — free from the Libretro libraries first, no account — and gameplay video snaps through your own EmuMovies account, best quality first. Art already on your disk wins, nothing you placed by hand is ever overwritten, and a filename-only match is labelled “probable” until a hash confirms it.
Why it beats the usual way: the usual way is scraping by hand, one game at a time, or a launcher whose pretty wall only covers the games its store sold you. Here the shine applies to the whole shelf — including the games you owned before Vizsla existed.
The stores you already use
Steam runs as the real client. Epic’s official app installs in one tap from the Games door — fingerprint-checked before a byte lands. Your GOG library rides in through Heroic, by the same door. Itch brings its own app through that door too — one tap and your indie library is inside. Nothing here asks you to re-buy a library to change your operating system.
Why it beats the usual way: the usual way treats your other stores as somebody else’s problem. These are doors in the same launcher, installed from the stores’ own services — your shelves come with you.
The Arcade
Original games built for the OS itself, with Rusty the vizsla presiding over the cabinet — no store account, no launcher stack, no update that locks you out at game time.
Why it beats the usual way: the games are part of the system, so they just start. Nothing to sign into, nothing phoning home, no 40-gigabyte patch standing between you and the first level.
TV Launcher
Plug the same box into the TV and the whole system re-dresses for the couch: big type, a remote’s worth of buttons, one Back that always means back.
Why it beats the usual way: it’s literally the same machine and the same files — not a second device with a second library to re-buy and re-organize, and not a desktop squinted at from ten feet away.
One honest asterisk, carried from the front page: a few competitive titles demand kernel-level anti-cheat that won’t run here yet, and if your main game is one of those, this isn’t your machine today. Everything else plays by a simpler rule — if it’s on your box, it’s yours, offline, forever.
For audiophiles: your music, your shelves, no landlord
You bring the music — a lifetime of files, ripped and collected. Vizsla brings the library, the magazine, and the player, and none of them reports back to a streaming service.
AudioWaves — the library that fills itself
Open it and your collection is simply there: the scan that used to be a button you had to remember now happens on its own at first launch. The Music room is a magazine about your own records — artist pages with bios credited to MusicBrainz and Wikipedia, album pages with the release facts, covers from the Cover Art Archive — and an enrichment engine that works through the whole collection, track by track, its facts living on your disk.
Why it beats the usual way: the usual way is a streaming app’s borrowed library with your own files shoved in a side tab, grey and unlabelled. Here your files are the main collection — the shelf everything else is shelved around.
Playlists, built in
Playlists are a room of their own: make one in a breath, add any track with one tap, or import the playlist files you already have — they land as first-class lists, not attachments.
Why it beats the usual way: your playlists are the one thing streaming services hold hostage — leave, and the lists stay behind. These are data in your library, in the open, on your machine.
Podcasts that wear their names
Podcasts ride in the same library — shows and episodes listed by their real titles, refreshed on your word, with an honest note when a feed goes quiet instead of a row of blanks.
Why it beats the usual way: the usual podcatcher buries the feeds you chose inside a store that’s always selling you a different one. This is a shelf for your feeds, named the way their makers named them.
Songdog — the MIDI desk
The family’s MIDI player: a DJ desk that synthesizes your MIDI files live — the arcade songbook, your themes’ soundtracks, your own files — never recorded, never phoned home.
Why it beats the usual way: chiptune and MIDI usually mean a museum emulator and a settings swamp. Songdog just plays them, live, like instruments.
You bring your own media — that’s the deal, stated proudly. Vizsla ships the players, the shelves, and the playlists; the music is yours, on your disk, playable with the internet down and unplayable by no one’s revoked license.
For videophiles: the theater is the collection you own
You bring the films — the shelves you’ve built over years. Vizsla brings the catalog, the poster wall, and the couch, and treats the collection like it matters.
Film Ferret — the catalog, with playlists built in
Every film you own, catalogued properly — and playlists are built in, not bolted on: build a list for a director, a decade, a mood, and it’s a shelf of its own, kept in the catalog with the films.
Why it beats the usual way: the usual way is a streaming home screen that shows you what’s being sold this month and calls it your library. The Ferret’s catalog is your collection and nothing else — no row is an advertisement, and nothing “leaves soon.”
Poster Player — the wall
Your collection, presented like it matters — a poster wall for the films and shows on your disk, dressed for the big screen, and a private theater when you press play.
Why it beats the usual way: streaming shelves hang posters for whatever a service is pushing this month. This wall is your taste, floor to ceiling.
Rabbit Ears — your stations, your shelves
Your stations and streams gathered in one place, on shelves you arrange — and your own film files play right in the window, no detour through another app.
Why it beats the usual way: instead of remembering which service has which channel this month, one place holds what you actually watch, organized the way you think about it.
TV Launcher — the couch face
Plug the box into the TV and the whole system re-dresses for the couch: big type, a remote’s worth of buttons, one Back that always means back — the same machine, the same library.
Why it beats the usual way: not a second device with a second library to re-buy and re-organize. The theater and the desk are one box wearing two shapes.
You bring your own media — stated proudly, again. Vizsla ships the players, the shelves, the posters, and the playlists; the films are the owner’s own collection, on the owner’s own disk, watched offline and owned outright.
For digital sovereigns: yours, verifiably
You already know the usual bargain: your data, their servers, their terms, revocable at their convenience. Vizsla was built by someone who read that bargain and declined it — here is the machinery of the refusal.
Sniff Search
Search that answers with named sources — it shows you where an answer came from instead of asking you to trust a summary — and keeps no profile of you.
Why it beats the usual way: a search engine that monetizes you must eventually serve two masters. Sniff has one: there is no advertiser, no history to sell, and no account to tie your questions to.
Fable Files, with its document vault
Your files, organized by a file manager built for the system — with a vault inside it for the documents that matter most: IDs and the papers you’d need on your worst day.
Why it beats the usual way: the important documents stop living as attachments in a mail account someone else controls. They live in your vault, on your disk, under your lock.
Retrieve
Backups you rehearse restoring — the drill is part of the design, so a backup is a promise you’ve already watched yourself keep.
Why it beats the usual way: an unrestored backup is a hope wearing a progress bar. Retrieve treats the restore as the product; the backup is just how you get there.
Account Map
Every account you hold, mapped: where it lives, the sign-in name, the second factor, the recovery path — and an optional note of who it’s for. Passwords are never stored; that line is bright.
Why it beats the usual way: sovereignty you can’t recover from is a lockout waiting for a dead phone. The map makes the recovery paths explicit and drills them, so your independence survives your worst week.
Facts Vault
Your facts — the names, numbers, dates, and details every form demands — confirmed by you once, kept with their sources, and offered to form boxes so you never retype your life.
Why it beats the usual way: autofill in a browser is a guess that syncs to a cloud. Facts Vault fills from facts with a source and a date, presents anything doubtful for your word, and never silently merges two people into one.
Elefunk, carrying Proton and Infomaniak
Mail through providers under Swiss and European privacy law — Proton by its Bridge, Infomaniak a preset away — read and written in one calm inbox on your machine.
Why it beats the usual way: the mailbox stays with providers whose law is on your side, and the client keeps its copies locally. And there is no Vizsla account in the middle — none exists to be breached, subpoenaed, or sold.
Secrets
The family’s password vault: your logins sealed under your own password, on your own disk — and nothing about it syncs anywhere you didn’t send it yourself.
Why it beats the usual way: the usual vault is a subscription with a breach history. This one is a program on your machine; there is no company’s server holding a copy of your keys, because there is no company in the middle.
The whole system runs on the Linux kernel and is free and open-source software — the statement is on the Kindness & privacy page. Sovereignty that can’t be audited is marketing; this one can be read.
For digital nomads: the whole computer, in the bag
Your office is wherever the chair is. The usual kit is a laptop, a cloud for everything, and a small prayer for the wifi. Vizsla packs differently.
Your whole computer, on a drive you carry
The same full install — your apps, files, and setup — lives on a drive you carry, and runs as itself on the machine in front of you. Plug in a portable monitor and it’s a phone-shaped workspace; plug into a TV and it’s a theater; add a controller and it’s the console.
Why it beats the usual way: no syncing three devices and hoping the versions agree, because there aren’t three devices’ worth of state — there’s one system that takes the shape of the hardware it meets.
Vizsla Ferry
Changing phones mid-journey? Ferry packs the old phone’s life into one sealed file, fully offline, and the new setup opens it.
Why it beats the usual way: migration tools assume a fast connection and a cloud account. Ferry assumes a hostel lobby — it holds no internet permission at all, and you carry the file yourself. How Ferry works.
Elefunk
Offline-first mail: read everything on the train, write everything in the mountains, and the outbox waits politely for signal instead of erroring in your face.
Why it beats the usual way: webmail treats a dropped connection as your failure. Elefunk treats connectivity as weather — noted, waited out, never your problem to manage.
Runs properly on a small machine
The system is proven on a 12-gigabyte mini PC you can hold in one hand — not a flagship, a carry-on.
Why it beats the usual way: your whole setup fitting in a jacket-pocket PC means the expensive laptop can stay home — and if the little box is lost, what’s lost is hardware, not a life’s worth of cloud-synced everything.
Island Vault — the library travels too
The offline library rides along: Wikipedia, the dictionary, travel guides and maps as stocked packs on the same drive — a long train ride, or a country with expensive data, is still reading weather.
Why it beats the usual way: the usual nomad kit assumes the cloud is always one login away. The Vault assumes a mountain pass: the books are aboard before you lose the signal.
Nothing in the daily flow waits on a cloud: not your files, not your mail, not your search. The road’s connectivity is allowed to be terrible; your computer doesn’t have to care.
For caregivers: held together, in plain words
Caregiving is a second job made of phone calls, pill schedules, and other people’s paperwork — carried by someone who also has a life. These were built with that arithmetic open on the desk.
Medical, with its Care Book room
A book per person you care for: medications with refill warnings in plain words before they run out, a log of every provider call and what was said, visit notes, and a one-page care summary to hand the doctor. And when a new specialist has to be found, the Provider Hunt Log keeps every call of the hunt — who, when, what they said — until one of them books it, and the appointment lands in the book by itself.
Why it beats the usual way: the usual way is a notebook, a phone full of voicemails, and re-explaining everything at every appointment. The Care Book’s call log ends the phone-tag amnesia — and the summary page walks into the exam room with you, complete.
Family Papers
Health-care directives and powers of attorney for the people you care for — guided preparation, and their papers kept in their own section, never mixed with yours.
Why it beats the usual way: these documents get made in a crisis or not at all, because the usual route is a lawyer’s waiting room and a bill. Here the preparation is guided and unhurried, a printable brief goes to the lawyer for the signing, and the app says plainly that it isn’t one.
Keeping Up
Your friends, kept up with kindly: who you’ve heard from, who’s gone quiet, a gentle “say hello” with a kind reason — on a budget of nudges you set.
Why it beats the usual way: caregiving eats friendships by slow neglect, and social apps answer with streaks and guilt. Keeping Up never scores you, never shames you, and can never send anything on its own — it just keeps the people visible until you have a minute that’s yours.
Arrival
The day at a glance — including the care alerts, like a refill coming due — on one calm first screen.
Why it beats the usual way: care information usually lives in five apps and a paper calendar, and the day’s shape only emerges by checking all of them. Arrival is the one place the day introduces itself, quietly.
The Care Book is honest about its own limits, out loud: it lives outside the encrypted medical record, in plain sight of anyone using the machine — the app says so before you rely on it, because a caregiver deserves tools that don’t oversell their locks.
For job hunters: the hunt, kept honest and kind
Job hunting is a full-time job with no paycheck and a hundred tiny humiliations of retyping. Vizsla can’t fix the market. It can fix the paperwork, the memory, and the follow-through.
Application Desk
Every application and its true history — applied, interviewed, waiting — recorded as it happened and never rewritten, plus a Still-waiting view that tells the truth kindly.
Why it beats the usual way: the spreadsheet lies by omission and the job boards forget you exist. The Desk remembers what actually happened, in order, so “did I apply there?” is a lookup, not a spiral.
Facts Vault
The facts every application form demands — confirmed by you once, then offered box by box as forms ask, with anything doubtful presented for your word first.
Why it beats the usual way: the fortieth retyping of your own work history is not diligence, it’s a design failure. Fill it once, confirm it once, and spend the saved hours on the cover letter that actually gets read.
Elefunk
Follow-up letters built from the application card’s own facts — the right company, the right date, the right role — so the thank-you and the gentle nudge go out on time, in your voice.
Why it beats the usual way: follow-ups die in the gap between good intentions and a blank compose window. Here the letter starts from what the Desk already knows, and sending it is a minute, not an evening’s dread.
Hours Book
Gig and shift hours while you hunt — weekend work, temp shifts, the odd job — on a clock with proof sheets.
Why it beats the usual way: patchwork income is still income, and it deserves records that hold up. When a gig short-pays, the sheet is the conversation.
Write a Resume
The resume itself, written in a program on the machine — the Desk’s own records point here, so the history you’ve kept becomes the document you send.
Why it beats the usual way: the usual way is a template site that keeps your work history on its servers and charges to download your own life. This is a file, yours, in an open format.
Keeping Up
Hunts are won by people who remember you. Keeping Up keeps your circle in view — who’s gone quiet, a kind reason to say hello, on a nudge budget you set — and never sends anything on its own.
Why it beats the usual way: networking platforms turned friendship into a feed and your contacts into their inventory. This keeps the people, drops the feed, and leaves the sending to you.
Nothing here reports your hunt to anyone. No recruiter platform gets a copy of your applications, your gaps, or your hopes — the Desk is a book on your machine, and it opens for you alone.
For delivery drivers: every mile and hour, on the record
Your car is the business, and the platform keeps its own records of both. These keep yours — hours, miles, upkeep, and the papers — in your hands, in formats you can hand to anyone.
Hours Book
Start the clock when the shift starts; it keeps time even if you close the app. Miles are logged per job and written out in the tax kit’s own format, so deduction season starts from a file, not from a year of guessing.
Why it beats the usual way: the platform’s summary is written by the platform, for the platform. Your proof sheet is yours — and when a week’s pay looks short, it’s the record you argue from.
Garage Log
The car’s upkeep in one log — oil, tires, brakes, inspections — with what’s due said in plain words and raised on your first screen before it’s late, not after.
Why it beats the usual way: a missed oil change isn’t a chore deferred; it’s a breakdown on a route, in the rain, on your best earning day. The log watches the intervals so your memory doesn’t have to.
Tax Shoebox
The 1099s, fuel and repair receipts, the insurance papers — filed into their drawers as they arrive, all year, and exported as one verified bundle when your preparer asks.
Why it beats the usual way: April, a shoebox, and a year of faded gas-station receipts is the standard gig filing system, and it fails on schedule. Filed on arrival, the bundle is boring — which is what you want from taxes.
Account Map
Every platform you drive for — the main app, the backup apps, the payment account — mapped in plain words: the sign-in name, the second factor, and how you get back in when the phone dies. It stores no passwords at all; it’s the map, not the vault.
Why it beats the usual way: a dead phone on a Friday night shouldn’t mean five locked platforms and a lost weekend of earnings. The recovery path for each one is written down before you need it.
Claims Desk
When the platform’s pay statement and your own record disagree, Claims Desk puts the two papers side by side, flags the lines that don’t match with the evidence quoted, and drafts the letter that asks — from the facts, not from frustration.
Why it beats the usual way: a shorted week argued from screenshots is a week lost twice. A letter that lays their number beside yours, line by line, gets read differently.
Nothing about your driving rides along to a platform’s server: the hours, the miles, and the upkeep live on your machine, readable without Vizsla and without permission. The platform has its copy of your week. Now you have yours.
For independent contractors: the back office, without the office
Gig work means five bosses, none of whom do your paperwork. These are the back office — hours, miles, taxes, accounts, and the occasional argument — sized for exactly one person.
Hours Book
Every platform’s hours on one clock, per job, with proof sheets — and mileage exported in the tax records’ own format, so a week split across three apps is still one honest record.
Why it beats the usual way: three apps each keep a partial diary of your week, and none of them will total it for the tax man or a dispute. One clock, one record, every boss’s hours in the same book.
Tax Shoebox
1099s land all January from every direction. The shoebox offers each paper its drawer as it arrives, keeps it confirmed by you, and hands your preparer one verified bundle instead of a grocery bag.
Why it beats the usual way: its promise is printed on its face — it keeps the papers; it doesn’t do your taxes — and a year of papers filed on arrival is the difference between a bundle and a panic.
Account Map
Every platform, marketplace, and payment app you work through — sign-in names, second factors, recovery paths, and who gets what — mapped in plain words, with a Recovery Drill that walks a locked-out day before it happens. Passwords are never stored.
Why it beats the usual way: your whole income runs through logins, and the map of them usually lives in your head and a notes app. Here it’s a book with the recovery paths spelled out — a lost phone is an errand, not an eviction.
Facts Vault
The W-9 facts — legal name, EIN, address — plus license and insurance details: confirmed by you once, kept with their sources, and offered box by box to every onboarding form that asks the same twelve questions.
Why it beats the usual way: every new platform’s onboarding is the same form wearing a new logo. Fill your facts once, confirm them once, and the fortieth retyping never happens.
Money Leaks
The subscriptions audit, inside your books: the premium tiers, the apps, the storage, the music for the work van — every recurring charge in one list, one monthly burn number, and a pile for the ones you stopped using, with cancellation letters drafted when a service insists on one.
Why it beats the usual way: gig income leaks quietly — a tier you needed for one month in March, billed forever. The burn number makes the leak visible in one glance, in your own books, not a fintech app’s.
Elefunk’s Templates Library
The business letters, written once: the quote follow-up, the scope-change note, the polite ladder of payment reminders — kept in one library, sent in a minute each, in your voice.
Why it beats the usual way: gig work’s unpaid second job is composing the same emails at midnight. The ladder is already written; you climb it one kind step at a time, and the tone never says something at midnight you’d regret at breakfast.
No platform owns your records and no back-office subscription rents you your own books: all of it lives on your machine, in open formats, and works in airplane mode — which is more than the apps you work for can say.
Whose life isn’t on the list?
Seventeen lives is a start, not a census. Every panel above is the same system wearing a different day — the roster of everything inside is on What’s inside, the arithmetic of what it replaces is on Savings, and if your life doesn’t match a chip, tell us what it looks like. Vizsla is still listening.