Grimoire 1.0

In May I wrote about where Grimoire stood and what still blocked calling a build “1.0.” That post was mostly a checklist: prove performance and retrieval, ship installers people can trust, make the first hour clearer, and keep the privacy story honest.

Today that gate is crossed. Grimoire 1.0 is out.

What “1.0” means here

This is not a rewrite or a sudden pile of new note features. The app you could already use for folders, tags, wiki-links, encryption, Wikipedia ZIMs, file scanning, and local RAG is the same product. What changed is the stuff that makes strangers’ first install credible:

• Installers for Windows, macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon), and Linux, built in CI, with per-platform checksums.
• Documented performance and search-quality budgets, with harnesses you can run yourself—not vibes from one laptop.
• An opt-in, notify-only update check that asks for a version number and nothing else (see the update policy).
• A stable application identity (com.grimoire.app) with a careful migration from older preview data folders.
• User-facing docs, a clearer first-run path, and the usual release hygiene: cross-platform CI, license audit, release notes that admit what is still unsigned.

Ollama is still something you install separately (or through the in-app setup). Builds are not code-signed yet; Windows and macOS may warn you. Those are known, documented trade-offs—not surprises.

It took longer than I wanted

I underestimated how much of Phase 4 was “get the boring path right.” Packaging across three OSes, release candidates that fail for reasons that have nothing to do with notes, Wayland quirks, cache and toolchain fights, checksum scripts that break on older macOS bash—each one is small until they stack. The RC train (rc.1 through rc.4) was exactly that: ship, find a sharp edge, fix it, ship again.

Life also got busier. I did not have the same uninterrupted stretches I had earlier in the project. Progress continued, just slower and in shorter bursts. I would rather say that plainly than pretend 1.0 arrived on the schedule I sketched in May.

A new home on GitHub

Grimoire’s public repository now lives under the 3ravens organization: github.com/3ravens/Grimoire. Same project, same license (GPL v3), clearer long-term home for the app and whatever grows around it.

Where to go next

• Download: grimoireapp.dev/download
• Docs: docs.grimoireapp.dev
• Source and releases: github.com/3ravens/Grimoire
• Earlier status: Grimoire toward v1.0

If you try it, break it, or want something Phase 5 still holds back—open an issue. The north star has not changed: old notes should become useful again, on your machine, without renting someone else’s server.