What is Gearbox Relay?

What is Gearbox Relay?

Gearbox Relay is a personal search engine for what you save. Every text you copy — quotes, code snippets, articles, notes — is automatically captured, enriched with on-device AI, and made instantly searchable. Publish curated collections as Streams that others can subscribe to.

All AI runs on your machine. Zero cloud AI tokens. Guaranteed privacy.

Why Gearbox Relay?

You save more than you can find. Bookmarks, highlights, quotes, and screenshots pile up with no structure. The internet remembers everything — you cannot remember what you saved.

Gearbox Relay fixes this. It gives every mind a private, permanent place where attention becomes structure.

Key features

• Automatic capture — A clipboard watcher, browser extension, and mobile share extension capture everything you copy. No manual saving required.
• On-device AI enrichment — Every capture receives a summary, tags, and semantic connections. Your data never leaves your device.
• Hybrid search — Full-text keyword search plus semantic search by meaning. Find anything in seconds.
• Streams — Publish curated knowledge collections. Others subscribe to your output on a specific topic.
• Architectural privacy — End-to-end encrypted sync. The server holds zero keys. The core client is open source under Apache 2.0.

Who is it for?

Curious knowledge workers who save a lot and find little. Researchers, writers, developers, designers, students — anyone who collects references and needs them to form something useful.

Core components

Gearbox Relay is a multi-platform system with four main components:

Desktop client

The primary experience for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Built with Tauri 2.0 (Rust + React), it runs a local AI model for enrichment and manages your local database. The clipboard watcher runs in the background, automatically capturing everything you copy.

Mobile apps

Native apps for iOS and Android. The iOS app uses Apple's MLX framework for on-device AI. The Android app uses Google's MediaPipe. Both support capture via the system share menu and offer full search and Stream management.

Browser extension

A Chrome extension (Manifest V3) that captures selected text via right-click or keyboard shortcut (Alt+Shift+R). Sends captures directly to your local Gearbox Relay via a local HTTP endpoint.

Sync server

An optional relay server that syncs your encrypted data across devices. Uses LWW (last-writer-wins) conflict resolution. All data is encrypted client-side with OpaqueBlob v2 before transmission — the server never sees plaintext.

What you can build with Gearbox Relay

A personal knowledge base. Every article you read, every quote that strikes you, every snippet of code you copy — it all becomes searchable. The AI adds structure you didn't have to create.

A research log. Following a topic across dozens of sources? Gearbox Relay captures everything and the AI connects the threads.

A curated publication. Streams let you publish collections on topics you care about. Subscribers follow your output, not you personally.

A second brain. Your captures form a map of what you actually think about. Patterns emerge in your attention that you didn't consciously notice.

What you cannot do with Gearbox Relay

Gearbox Relay is not a social network. There is no follower count, no viral algorithm, no engagement bait.

Gearbox Relay does not use cloud AI. All enrichment happens on your device. This means offline functionality and complete privacy — but also means enrichment quality depends on your device's capabilities.

Gearbox Relay is not end-to-end encrypted at rest on your local device. The encryption protects data in transit and in sync storage. Local device security (disk encryption, device passcode) is your responsibility.

The name

"Relay" reflects how the system works: your captures move from device to device, from thought to thought, from you to your audience via Streams. It is a handoff, not a broadcast.