Why We Build

The internet didn't end with a bang. It ended with a Terms of Service update.

Thirty years ago, the Cypherpunks saw the walls closing in. They understood that centralized systems eventually serve the center, not the edges. Their response wasn't political — it was architectural.

Build systems where privacy is the default, not a feature.

Their mandate was absolute: Privacy is necessary. Write the code.

But the code wasn't enough to stop the incentive of greed. Cory Doctorow gave the resulting disease a name: Enshittification.

This is the terminal stage of platform capitalism. First, they lure you in with magic; then, they lock the doors; finally, they stop building entirely to strip the copper from the walls.

The platforms are now structurally unable to risk the kind of innovation they once lived on. They are terrified of the very instincts that built them.

While the platforms were building bureaucracies, the pioneers were writing open-source, privacy-first code.

We inherited decades of their work. The barriers to entry have shifted from the material to the intellectual — from capital to curiosity. In an era of instant information, the price of entry has never been lower.

This is not frictionless. Self-hosting is work. Ownership has overhead. But the nature of the work has changed. AI now handles the grunt work — reading documentation, scaffolding the unfamiliar, explaining errors — leaving you to be the architect.

The path is clearer than it has ever been. Build in the open. Document as you go. Become the foundation for whoever comes next.

We are done with promises. Promises are broken in board meetings. To resist the rot, we build with Architectural Immunity.

• Local-First: If it can't run without their servers, you're a tenant. Local is the foundation — meshes are how tenants become neighbours.
• True Ownership: If you don't hold the keys, you don't own the data. Export must be lossless, legible, and yours to replicate.
• No Kill Switch: If a vendor, a government, or a boardroom can brick your device, the design is hostile by intent.

This is not a lifestyle choice or a moral sermon. Convenience will always win for the masses, and no one owes their time to infrastructure they didn't ask to manage.

But a system that offers no credible alternative is not convenient — it's coercive. Our work is about making the exit real, functional, and respected.

When a genuine option to leave exists, power behaves differently.

The presence of a viable path outside the platforms is what keeps them honest. We aren't just building tools. We are building a structural safeguard for digital agency.

The Cypherpunks told you to write the code. Doctorow gave a name to the rot.

We're telling you the cage is unlocked. The bars aren't made of steel; they're made of habit and the false comfort of a "convenient" login.

You are waiting for a permission slip that will never come. The door is already open.

You just have to stop paying for the lock.

The rotting, rent-seeking monoliths have marketing departments, sales teams, and cold-call budgets. They will find you. They will email you. They will buy ads until you submit.

Open-source, local-first projects have none of that. They build tools that work and vanish into the noise. Nobody is paying for ads to tell you about software that respects your ownership.

This is the discoverability problem. Great privacy respecting software doesn't cold-call. It just exists, waiting to be found.

So we're building infrastructure with teeth. A public registry that isn't just a list — it's a pipeline.

The Method: Host the beacon file at /.well-known/freehold.json. Crawlers validate it. You appear in the directory. The pipeline opens.

{
  "$schema": "https://www.localghost.ai/schemas/freehold-v1.json",
  "version": "1.0",
  "updated": "2025-01-15T00:00:00Z",
  "project": {
    "name": "Your Project Name",
    "description": "A short description of what it does.",
    "url": "https://your-project.com",
    "logo": "https://your-project.com/logo.svg",
    "repository": "https://github.com/your-username/your-project",
    "license": "MIT",
    "created": "2025-01-01"
  },
  "maintainer": {
    "name": "Your Name or Org",
    "contact": "hello@your-project.com",
    "pgp": "https://your-project.com/.well-known/pgp-key.asc"
  },
  "freehold": {
    "local_first": true,
    "offline_capable": true,
    "no_remote_kill_switch": true,
    "no_mandatory_auth_server": true,
    "data_export": {
      "format": "json",
      "complete": true,
      "documented": "https://your-project.com/docs/export"
    }
  }
}