The operating system for personal agents and applications

Run apps and agents on your data without giving control.
Local-first, open-source, and secure by design.

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Section 01 What is Grove?

What is Grove?

Grove is a desktop app that runs single-player applications and agents (trees) in a secure sandbox on your own machine. Trees can connect to your services, work with AI, store data, and even read and modify their own code.

Everything stays private. And everything syncs across your devices, with clients supported on mobile too when paired with an optional sync server.

The Nursery lets you find and run trees made by others without giving them your data.

Section 02 Features

Data Sovereignty

Your Data Never Leaves Your Control

Local-first: trees and data live on your filesystem, not in the cloud
End-to-end encrypted sync — the server only sees ciphertext
Self-hostable: run your own sync server, or disconnect entirely
Open-source: audit every line of code

Security Architecture

Defense-in-Depth Sandboxing

Four independent security layers: iframe sandbox, CSP, network filter, and local blocking proxy
Trees get zero network access by default — every external request requires your explicit approval
API keys and tokens never reach the tree — all authenticated requests execute outside the sandbox
Granular per-tree, per-domain, per-endpoint permissions you control

Integration Layer

Connect Everything, Expose Nothing

Plug in your own Google, Slack, Claude, OpenAI, and other accounts
Trees call APIs through a secure proxy — they see responses, never credentials
Connect MCP servers and let trees use tools without credential exposure
Declare permissions upfront or approve request-by-request

Replication Engine

Sync Across Every Device

Each tree gets its own SQLite database with CRDT-powered conflict-free replication
Settings, permissions, and tree data sync automatically across desktop clients
Background worker trees run persistently, with singleton coordination across your grid
Designate workers to run locally or on remote headless clients — automatic failover included

Section 03 Example Trees

UC-01

Messaging Agent

A messaging app wrapper that classifies your inbound messages, writes drafts, and sends them for you upon approval.

UC-02

OpenClaw Instance

An OpenClaw instance with secure, controllable, and auditable access to your data.

UC-03

Scheduling Agent

A scheduling agent that manages your calendar, resolves conflicts, and coordinates across time zones.

UC-04

Personal CRM

A personal CRM that self-updates through reading your conversations and keeping track of your relationships.

UC-05

Newsletter Summarizer

A summarizer that reads and compacts your newsletters into one daily digest you can skim in minutes.

UC-06

Self-Building Chat UI

A ChatGPT-esque chat interface that writes and updates its own UI to fulfill an eventual use case.

All without giving access to your data to yet another company, and without needing to trust tree code due to Grove's sandboxing approach. These examples are live in the Nursery today, published open-source. You can easily build these things too with your favorite AI coding agent.

Section 04 Getting Started

Step 01: Setup

Download the app

Available for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Install and launch — no account required, no cloud dependency.

Step 02: Configure

Connect services

Add your AI providers, email, calendar, and other accounts. Credentials stay local — and trees never see them.

Step 03: Activate

Build/install a tree

Browse the Nursery for ready-made apps and agents, or point your favorite AI coding agent at the tree spec to build your own.

Step 04: Replicate

Sync and multi-device

Optionally connect to a sync server to replicate across all your devices (eg. mobile or a headless worker client) with e2e encryption.

Section 05 Built for Builders

B.01 — Compatibility

Any static web app (React, Vue, vanilla JS) becomes a tree

B.02 — Self Hosting

Self-host a headless client (sees your data) for workers, or a sync server (sees ciphertext)

B.03 — Workers

Worker trees for persistent background agents and automation via headless client

B.04 — MCP Support

MCP server support for connecting AI tools

B.05 — Self-Modification

Trees have full read/write access to their own source — build agents that evolve, rewrite, and improve themselves autonomously

B.06 — WASM Runtime

Run compilers, bundlers, and AI models in-situ via WASM — trees can build themselves without a server