Katra is an open source, graph-native AI workspace for conversations, tasks, and collaborative intelligence.

Warning

main now tracks the in-progress Katra v2 rewrite. Looking for the original proof of concept? See v1.0.0.

Katra v2

Katra v2 is being rebuilt as a local-first Laravel application that can run in multiple environments. NativePHP is the first-class local shell, but the application is also intended to support server, container, and Kubernetes-style deployment targets.

The long-term direction is a graph-native system where conversations, tasks, decisions, artifacts, and related context become first-class objects instead of disposable chat history. That foundation is intended to support multi-user and multi-model collaboration, subagents, GraphRAG-style retrieval, and real-time project management.

Planned Stack

• Laravel 13
• NativePHP
• SurrealDB v3 with a desktop-embedded and server-remote runtime strategy
• Laravel AI
• Laravel MCP
• Laravel Fortify
• Livewire
• Tailwind CSS
• Pest
• Laravel Boost for local development

Runtime Targets

• Local-first desktop experience through NativePHP
• Traditional Laravel server deployments
• Docker-based deployments
• Helm and Kubernetes-oriented deployments

Current Status

Katra v2 is an active rewrite. The repository is being rebuilt in small, reviewable pull requests, and preview macOS desktop artifacts are now attached to GitHub Releases as the shell evolves. The proof of concept is preserved at v1.0.0 for historical reference and is not being actively developed.

Try Katra

There are two practical ways to try Katra today.

Download A Desktop Preview

• Browse the GitHub Releases page and download the latest macOS desktop asset for your machine.
• Choose the architecture-specific asset that matches your Mac when it is available: x64 for Intel, arm64 for Apple Silicon.
• Desktop preview builds now bundle the local Surreal runtime instead of expecting a separate machine-local surreal CLI install.
• Current desktop builds are preview-quality and use ad-hoc macOS signing, so macOS may require Open Anyway or a control-click Open flow the first time you launch it.

Run From Source

composer setup
composer native:dev

That path installs dependencies, prepares the Laravel app, bootstraps NativePHP, and starts the local desktop development loop.

Planning Docs

• Katra v2 Overview
• Katra v2 Product and Architecture Principles
• Katra Brand Foundation
• Issue #13: Katra v2 product vision and architecture principles

Contributing

Contributions are welcome as the rewrite takes shape. For now, the best place to follow the work is the issue tracker and the planning docs linked above.

Repository workflow, commit conventions, and release policy are documented in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Optional local AI tooling setup is documented in Laravel Boost Setup. Native desktop bootstrap, release artifacts, and local shell setup are documented in NativePHP Desktop Setup.

License

Katra is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT License.