it’s 11pm. your DAW is open. you have an idea. you don’t want a loading spinner. you don’t want to “sign in to continue.” you don’t want a service-degraded banner. you want the tool.

most music software you use today started cloud-first because that’s where the easy money was: subscriptions, telemetry, network effects. but the rig you work on between sessions — the catalog you flip through, the masters you bounce, the references you a/b — none of that needs to be in someone else’s data center.

GRIDWERK runs on your machine. the catalog and audio processing keep working offline after any needed model download. connected features are separate and described below.

what local-first actually means

it’s not just “you can use it offline.” that’s the floor.

local-first means:

local files are processed on your machine for stem separation, mastering and reference analysis. demucs runs on your CPU, and the mastering chain is real DSP, not a cloud round-trip. a linked reference still has to be fetched first.
your library is yours. SQLite on your disk. you can copy it. you can back it up to whatever you want. if GRIDWERK disappears tomorrow, you still have the data.
core catalog and already-installed processing keep working when the internet breaks. network flows include licence and update checks, the first model download for stem separation, optional integrations, optional ByrddDrive backup and opt-out crash reports. the privacy policy lists them in detail.
nothing GRIDWERK does on your machine becomes a per-minute bill. cloud stem separation costs money per song. local stem separation costs CPU time, which you already paid for.

what we lose by being local-first

i should be honest here.

we don’t have real-time collaboration. you can’t share a session with another producer over the internet and have you both editing it. we picked the wrong half of CRDT-vs-local-database and the right half is on the roadmap, not in the box today.

we don’t get free network-effect virality. people don’t accidentally see GRIDWERK because their friend shared a Splice pack with them. we have to earn each user one at a time.

we don’t bill local audio processing by the minute. the planned Pro offer is $149 once for the 1.x product, with no recurring GRIDWERK licence fee. optional third-party services have their own terms and costs.

why it matters for producers specifically

producers ship work that’s worth real money. unreleased beats are inventory. a leaked stem is theft. a vocal sent to the wrong cloud is a lawsuit waiting to happen.

every producer i know has a horror story about uploading something to the wrong place. “i swear i set it to private.” “the link was supposed to expire.” “they used my unreleased loop in a tiktok.”

local processing reduces the need to upload unreleased audio just to analyze or master it. it does not make every connected feature risk-free: exports and optional integrations still deserve the same care as any other networked tool.

what’s still on the network

i’m not trying to oversell the offline angle. some things genuinely need it:

license validation — Pro is a one-time licence tied to your key. the app checks it with our server at startup when it can reach us, and a check that fails changes nothing: a licence you bought outright has no expiry and no offline countdown. only a refund or a revocation stops one.
reference analysis — when you drop a YouTube link to A/B against, we have to actually fetch the audio. that’s a network call. but the analysis happens locally after the download.
distribution prep — when you’re ready to ship to DistroKid or TuneCore, we hand them the metadata and files. that’s the point.
update checks — a packaged build asks our release feed on startup whether there’s a newer 1.x. it does not send your licence key or library; the release host still receives ordinary request metadata such as IP address and user agent. it downloads nothing until you say so.
the stem separation model, once — the audio engine is inside the installer, but the separation model weights are not; the first time you run a separation the app fetches them, and after that it’s your CPU and your disk forever. your audio still never goes anywhere.
crash reports — if the app crashes and you’ve left it on (it’s on by default, off in one click in Settings → Privacy & Feedback), we get the stack trace, the error message, the app version, your OS, and the last few internal log lines. no audio, and nothing out of your database. but stack traces are made of file paths, so file paths do go with them — we rewrite your home directory to ~ before the report leaves the machine, which takes your username out of it, and we can’t promise a project or file name never shows up inside an error message. i’d rather say that than write “no file paths” and have you find out otherwise. the full version is in the privacy policy.

your library and created audio files stay local by default. optional ByrddDrive backups deliberately upload a database snapshot if you enable them, and error messages in opt-out crash reports may contain a project or file name. the privacy policy gives the exact boundaries.

the philosophical part

most SaaS treats your data as their leverage. they keep it, they index it, they decide who else gets to see it. when you cancel, they make leaving as painful as they legally can.

i don’t want to build that. i want to build the rig that’s quietly there at 11pm when you have the idea. you open it. it opens. it works.

if i ever stop being a person who makes music, i still have to be able to look at GRIDWERK and use it without flinching.

key takeaways

GRIDWERK processes audio on your machine and stores the library locally by default
network flows include licence/update checks, first-use model downloads, optional integrations and backups, opt-out crash reports, and actions you explicitly publish or distribute
you give up real-time collaboration for now; you keep speed, privacy, and ownership of your work
the planned Pro licence is $149 once for the 1.x product, regardless of catalog size

if any of this sounds like the rig you wanted, join the waitlist. we’re in private build — drop your email and you’ll get the install link the day it ships. the library, project tracker, and DAW integrations are free forever. Pro is when the production suite and business tools turn on.