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Istota

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Istota is a self-hosted personal AI assistant with its own web UI. It runs on your own server and works with any model — use Claude through the Claude Code CLI, or point it at any OpenAI-compatible endpoint like OpenRouter or a local model. Talk to it over the built-in web chat, email, or Nextcloud Talk. It integrates with Nextcloud for files, calendars, and messaging — a deep integration, though not a hard requirement.

It ships with a set of skills the agent loads on demand — calendar, email, web browsing, git, accounting, transcription, and more — plus native web modules: multi-room chat, an RSS reader, location tracking with travel history and saved places, and health and accounting dashboards. It is multi-user out of the box, with per-user memory, filesystem sandboxing, and resource permissions.

Talk message ──>┐
Web chat ──────>│
Email ─────────>├──> SQLite queue -> Scheduler -> Brain -> Response
TASKS.md ──────>│
CLI / REPL ────>┘

Messages arrive through Talk polling, the in-app web chat, IMAP, TASKS.md file watching, the interactive REPL, or the CLI. The scheduler claims tasks from a SQLite queue, builds a prompt with the user's resources, skills, memory, and conversation context, then hands it to a Brain in a sandbox. Responses go back through the same channel.

What is it?

Istota runs on your own server and handles the plumbing around a language model: input channels, task queuing, context assembly, prompt construction, skill loading, memory, scheduling, multi-user isolation, and response delivery. The reasoning comes from whichever model you point it at.

It is not tied to a single vendor. A pluggable Brain sits at the model seam: the default brain delegates to the Claude Code CLI, while the native brain runs Istota's own in-process agentic loop — tool dispatch, context compaction, retries — against any OpenAI-compatible endpoint (Anthropic, OpenRouter, or a local model). So Istota can run fully standalone on open models.

When you connect it to Nextcloud, it integrates as a regular Nextcloud user: file sharing, calendars, contacts, and Talk messaging all work through standard Nextcloud protocols. No webhooks, no OAuth apps, no server plugins.

Features at a glance

  • Messaging -- Nextcloud Talk (DMs and group rooms), in-app web chat (always-on rooms with live streaming), email (IMAP/SMTP with threading), TASKS.md file polling, interactive REPL, CLI
  • Skills -- ~30 built-in skills loaded on demand: calendar, email, web browsing, git/GitLab/GitHub, Beancount accounting, GPS tracking, bookmarks, voice transcription, OCR, RSS feeds, health tracking, and more
  • Memory -- Per-user persistent memory (with op-based nightly curation), per-channel memory, dated memory files, BM25 + vector search, temporal knowledge graph
  • Scheduling -- Cron jobs via CRON.md, natural-language reminders, scheduled briefings with calendar/markets/headlines/news/todos
  • Multi-user -- Per-user config, resource permissions, worker pools, filesystem sandboxing, admin/non-admin isolation
  • Security -- Bubblewrap sandbox, credential stripping, network isolation via CONNECT proxy, deferred DB writes
  • Constitution -- Emissaries layer defining how the agent handles data, privacy, and responsibility

Why Nextcloud?

Most AI assistant projects treat infrastructure as someone else's problem, connecting to third-party APIs for storage, calendars, and messaging. Istota takes a different approach: it runs on its own server and, when you connect it to Nextcloud, integrates as a regular user.

  • Zero Nextcloud configuration. Create a user account, invite it to a chat.
  • File sharing is native. Users share files with the bot like they share with colleagues.
  • Multi-user comes free. Nextcloud handles user isolation, file ownership, and access control.
  • Self-hosted end to end. Your data stays on your server. The only external dependency is a model provider — Claude, any OpenAI-compatible API, or a model you host yourself.
  • User self-service. Config files live in the user's Nextcloud folder. Edit with any text editor.

License

MIT.

This documentation is written and updated by Istota, and reviewed regularly by contributors for accuracy.