There's a myth that goes: "Open source is powerful, but it's not for normal people. You need to know how to run a server. You need to read the docs. You need to be the kind of person who enjoys a terminal."
We hear it a lot. We also think it's wrong, and we built Eigen Mesh to prove it.
Where the myth comes from
It comes from a real place. A lot of open source software is genuinely hard to run. You download a repo, follow a README that assumes you already know what you're doing, hit three missing dependencies, find a Docker compose file from 2022, and give up.
That's not a problem with open source. That's a problem with how those projects are shipped.
Open source is a license, not a deployment model. It says: you can see the code, you can change the code, you can run the code. It says nothing about whether you have to.
Two ways to use Eigen Mesh
We ship the same software two ways. You pick the one that fits.
Managed. You sign up, you get an account, you drop your first thought in. We run the servers, the database, the enrichment pipeline, the overnight consolidation, the backups. You never think about infrastructure. This is what most people want, and it's the default.
Self-hosted. You run the whole thing on your own hardware. Your data never leaves your machines. You own every byte. This is what some people want — security teams, privacy-maximalists, tinkerers, organizations with their own compliance constraints — and it's fully supported.
Same software. Same memory pipeline. Same hybrid retrieval. Different operator.
Why both matter
A lot of products offer "open source" as a marketing badge but only really support the managed version. A lot of open source projects treat self-hosting as the only "real" way to use them and treat the managed tier as a sellout.
We think both are real, and the choice between them is the actual product.
- If you don't want to think about servers, you shouldn't have to. Use the managed version. It's €3.99 a month, you start with 100 free credits, and you never see a config file.
- If you don't want anyone else to hold your memory, you shouldn't have to accept it. Self-host. The repo is at github.com/hikaru90/eigen, the license is Apache 2.0, and the docs walk you through it.
The point isn't which one is "right." The point is that you get to choose, and the choice is reversible. You can start managed and migrate to self-hosted later. You can start self-hosted and move to managed when you get tired of running a database. Your memory moves with you.
What "open source" actually buys you
Even if you never self-host, the fact that you could changes the relationship.
- No lock-in. If we disappear, or change the pricing, or get acquired by someone you don't trust, the software still exists. You can run it yourself.
- Auditable trust. "We don't train on your data" is a promise anyone can make. Open source means you can check. The code that handles your captures is the code on GitHub.
- Honest pricing. A subscription you can replace with self-hosting has to stay reasonable. €3.99 a month is what it costs when you have to compete with free.
- Extensibility. If you want Eigen Mesh to talk to a tool we don't integrate with yet, you can build it. Pull requests welcome.
Open source isn't about ideology for us. It's about leverage. You have options, so we have to earn you every month.
What about the "open source = insecure" cousin myth?
Worth addressing, because it gets repeated too.
The argument goes: if attackers can read the code, they can find the holes. The counter-argument is the one the entire security industry has settled on after decades of evidence: more eyes find more holes faster than fewer eyes do. Closed source doesn't mean no vulnerabilities — it means you don't get to know about them until it's too late.
Eigen Mesh is encrypted at rest, isolated per user, hosted on EU servers under GDPR, and the code that enforces all of that is public. If we got it wrong, someone can tell us. If we get it right, you can verify.
The honest version
Open source can be complicated. So can closed source. Complication is a property of how a project is built and shipped, not of its license.
We worked hard to make Eigen Mesh not complicated — managed for people who don't want to think about it, self-hosted for people who do, with the same software underneath both. The license is Apache 2.0. The repo is public. The choice is yours.
Try it
If you've been avoiding "open source AI tools" because you assumed they weren't for you, get early access to the managed version. You'll spend your first 100 free credits thinking about your thoughts, not your infrastructure. And if you ever want to take it all in-house, the repo will be waiting.