What Viola stands for

Every product has beliefs built into it, whether the people who made it admit it or not. Here are ours, said plainly, including the places we do not fully live up to them yet.

Private by default

Viola keeps to itself. We take the minimum, only when a task genuinely needs it, and we ask first before collecting the things that help us improve, like crash reports and usage. Your data stays on your machine by default and leaves only when there is a real reason and, where it counts, your permission. You should be able to use Viola without watching it out of the corner of your eye.

Local and free, forever

Bring your own hardware or your own keys and you run Viola without paying us a cent. That is not a trial and not a loss-leader, it is a promise. The honest reason it can stay free is that this path costs us almost nothing to run. The aim is simple: anything that costs money to run, the phone calls, the inference, anything metered, gets a switch to run it locally or on your own account instead. Not all of it is there yet, and some still routes through us today, but we are closing that gap one capability at a time.

No walls, no garden

We will not fence you in. No lock-in, no private format only we can read, no holding your own work hostage to keep you paying. Outgrow us or just change your mind, and you should be able to walk out the front door with everything that is yours. A product that has to cage you to keep you is not a product we want to build.

Maximum capability

We are not here to hold your hand or to decide what is good for you. We treat you as the capable adult you are, and we default to yes and to freedom. The few limits Viola has are about staying on the right side of the law, not second-guessing you: it will not place emergency calls or help with anything that puts real people at risk. Short of that, our job is to hand you range, not a leash.