The personal node

The trusted home for personal intelligence

Continuity, policy, and context live with you

A personal node is a capable system in the home that holds the authoritative identity, memory, policy, and operational continuity for one or more independently governed Unison assistants.

What the node holds

Each adult can govern their own keys, private context, credentials, memories, goals, interaction preferences, audit view, backup, export, and deletion. Shared household spaces support plans, devices, schedules, and records with explicit membership and purpose.

Identity and assurance

Person and device identities, channel bindings, authentication state, and assurance requirements establish who can request an operation.

Context and memory

Relational records, semantic indexes, source artifacts, summaries, and retention policy preserve useful continuity.

Policy and consent

Purpose, recipient, sharing, confirmation, disclosure, and retention rules govern every context space and capability grant.

Operations and recovery

Capability manifests, receipts, encrypted backups, restore evidence, exports, and deletion workflows support durable control.

Separately governed context spaces

Health, financial, legal, personal, household, and device information can live in context spaces with distinct keys, access policy, retention, and backup requirements. A capability receives access to the spaces and fields authorized for its purpose. This compartmentalized design limits exposure and gives each person understandable controls for sharing.

Household relationships are represented explicitly. Membership in a family or home provides context for policy decisions while each person's private authority remains independently governed.

Layers of protection

  1. Hardware rootSecure boot, measured boot, TPM-backed keys, and future hardware security modules establish device integrity where qualified hardware supports them.
  2. Encrypted storageKeys and context-space controls protect data at rest and support selective backup, export, rotation, and deletion.
  3. Isolated servicesCore, trust, capabilities, inference, channels, and surfaces retain scoped identities and communication paths.
  4. Continuous policyIdentity, purpose, recipient, risk, disclosure, and confirmation are evaluated at meaningful decision points.
  5. Detection and recoveryContent-minimized security signals, signed updates, rollback, quarantine, backup, and restore support resilient operation.

Local operation and selected services

The node can run models, retrieval, skills, storage, and household integrations locally according to its hardware profile. Governed external services can provide inference, transport, research, commerce, or encrypted off-premises backup. The node selects and scopes each participation through personal policy.

Remote interaction uses outbound-established connections and channel-bound identity. Administrative services remain on the protected network surface. Remote access, device synchronization, and backup each have their own contracts and permissions.

Offline packages can preserve locally available reference guidance and tools for maintenance, utilities, and emergency preparation. Published provenance, freshness, jurisdiction, and safety constraints remain part of that material.

Storage that can evolve

The storage architecture combines relational authority records, immutable source artifacts, semantic indexes, working memory, summaries, and archival tiers. Policy describes where data lives, how long it remains, which derived representations can be rebuilt, and which backup destinations are eligible.

Replaceable indexes and model-specific representations can be regenerated from governed sources. Redundant local storage and encrypted off-premises backup provide complementary recovery paths. Restore exercises produce evidence that the person can recover identity, policy, context, and service continuity.

Software today, modular appliance ahead

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on x86-64 is the approved first appliance target. WSL2 and Linux virtual machines support development and evaluation. Current evidence is software and hosted CI evidence on these profiles.

The envisioned household appliance brings modular compute and memory, redundant storage, networking, radios and sensor gateways, firewall and security infrastructure, power management, and fit-for-purpose cooling into a distinctive consumer-grade enclosure. The hardware program will track candidate components, estimated bill-of-materials cost, power and thermal budgets, compatibility, serviceability, and qualification status. Custom schematics and design artifacts are intended for open publication.

Incremental profiles can use available systems and accelerators as the project builds toward hardware expected in 2027 and 2028. Published compatibility data will connect each profile to the models, capabilities, latency, energy use, and evidence it can support.