Kaba
Verified Oct 15, 2026 ActiveDesktop harness that joins your own devices into an encrypted mesh, keeps a private memory of your work and trains LoRA adapters on it
Listed on EffectHub ·
Pricing
- Pricing model
- Freemium
Kaba Personal is free with no account server, installed from a one-line script or a download. Kaba Enterprise (self-hosted, fleet management, audit) is sold through a briefing with sales; no public price on the site.
Use tool ↗About Kaba
Kaba is a desktop app from Kaba Labs that puts a browser, terminal, file explorer and local models in one window and links every machine you own into an encrypted peer-to-peer mesh over QUIC, with a built-in VPN, exit nodes through your own peers and per-pane Tor. Its lab side records what you do as encrypted local memory, curates it into datasets and trains LoRA adapters with reinforcement learning on your own GPUs or a peer's. A policy gate asks for approval before anything sensitive runs or leaves the machine, and tools execute in gVisor sandboxes. Kaba Personal is free; Kaba Enterprise adds self-hosted fleet management and audit controls through a sales briefing.
- API
- Yes
- Last verified
- Oct 15, 2026
Verified sources
- Kaba described as a harness with browser, terminal, files and models, a mesh VPN with exit nodes, per-pane Tor, encrypted memory and LoRA training; Personal free, Enterprise via a 30-minute briefing (15 October 2026)kaba.ai ↗
- FAQ: 'Open source is pending', client repository under a GPLv3 No-AI Amendment licence, with a todo noting the site, kabactl page and crate disagree; Linux first-class with macOS and Windows builds (15 October 2026)docs.kaba.ai ↗
- GitHub organisation Kaba Labs, location United States of America, created September 2021 (15 October 2026)github.com ↗
Is Kaba legit?
We don’t label tools safe or unsafe. Below are the records we checked ourselves, each with the date we read it.
- Domain registered
- Jun 8, 2023 (3 years ago)Registry record (RDAP), registrar 1API GmbH, looked up Sep 17, 2026
- TLS certificate
- Issued by Let's Encrypt, valid until Jan 3, 2027Seen in our own connection to the site on Oct 15, 2026
- Last checked
- Oct 15, 2026The site answered
- Operated by
- Kaba Labs, United StatesOur research, card verified Oct 15, 2026
Pros & cons of Kaba
Kaba has grown from a local inference mesh into a whole desktop harness: browser, terminal, VPN and models in one app, with a lab that learns from everything you do on it. The idea is coherent for people who want a personal model trained on their own context without a cloud in the loop, but it is early — the docs themselves still flag the licence as unsettled — and the recording that feeds the training is the privacy decision you are actually making.
Pros
- One encrypted mesh across laptop, desktop and home lab, with VPN and exit nodes and no third-party account
- Memory and adapter training stay on your own hardware, encrypted at rest
- Policy gate asks for approval before sensitive actions; tools run in gVisor sandboxes
- Personal edition is free, with a scriptable kabactl CLI that reads stdin and writes JSON
- Memory and model features can be switched off, leaving a private browser and terminal
Cons
- The site says open source, but the FAQ says open source is pending and lists a GPLv3 No-AI Amendment licence with an unresolved todo
- Recording everything you see and do is a large trust decision, however local
- Parts of the site are unfinished, with template placeholders in the Enterprise section
- Linux is first-class; macOS and Windows builds have narrower platform support
Best for
- Developers with a spare GPU machine who want it usable from every device they own
- Privacy-minded users experimenting with LoRA adapters trained on their own work
- Security teams evaluating self-hosted AI with policy gates (Enterprise)
Not for
- Non-technical users who want a finished consumer browser
- Anyone who needs a settled open-source licence before adopting a tool
Watch out: Check the licence before building on it: the marketing page says free and open source while the FAQ says open source is pending under a GPLv3 No-AI Amendment licence.
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Kaba head-to-head
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