mahanu · big dreams, small steps
Four children in paper-cut silhouette — carrying a guitar, a basketball, books, and a harmonica — following a glowing firefly up a winding golden path.

Pick your pursuit. Bring your buddies. Ride the road.

Your journey. Your people. Your files. Mahanu is a home for builders and learners — friends, families, and small circles turning an idea into real work, getting genuinely better in their own pursuits of truth and beauty, and owning every byte of it.

free and open source · your files stay private, always · no feeds, no ads, no likes
what it enables

A project of your own — not a feed

Yours, forever

your project lives as open-format files on your own disk

flip

Start in the app and your files are on your disk from the first save — storing on our servers is opt-in, for backup, sync, publishing. Every note and image is an open-format file any computer can read, yours to keep even if you delete Mahanu.

Edit live, together

edit with your circle at the same time — it just merges

flip

No conflicted copies and no final_v2_FINAL. Everyone's change lands on everyone's device, even after being offline.

Nothing lost

every version of everything, remembered

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See who changed what, revisit any earlier day, and restore anything. A restore is just another entry in the story.

Safe by design

no likes, no followers, invite-only inside

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Only a project's card is public. Everything else — whether it sits on your disk or our server — is always private, the team's alone.

the projects

One card, one project

Our own projects come first. Below them, the community's — sorted into live projects running today, pilots clonable on day one, and drafts queued behind review and platform empowerment.

Community Projects

Live — running today

My First Video Game

ten years old, one finished game

liveflip

A ten-year-old builds and finishes their first real video game — designed, vibe-coded with an AI helper, playtested and shipped — learning that an idea in your head can become something other people actually play.

visit project →

Pilot — clonable on day one

Draft — queued for review

start here

Guides for people using Mahanu

One page of short answers — what you own, how projects stay safe, and why Mahanu is built this way — each linking to the full guide.

Read the FAQ →