OfflineVault is an offline knowledge library for Mac, built for emergencies and for places with no internet: guidebooks, maps, videos and an AI assistant that run entirely on your device, answering only from the books you have downloaded, with a citation to the exact page. The product appeared on Show HN on 8 November 2026. You can read the launch thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50413282.
What it is
When the internet goes down, a search engine is useless. OfflineVault prepares in advance: it stores field guides, government manuals, medical references and maps on your Mac, and an on-device AI assistant answers questions using only those books. Every claim carries a citation that opens the exact page it came from, and questions the books cannot support are labelled unverified instead of answered with a guess.
The library covers water, fire, first aid, medicine, food, shelter, electricity and evacuation, drawing on sources such as the CDC, FEMA Ready.gov, MedlinePlus and iFixit, plus world maps that work offline. A readiness drill tests the whole library with Wi-Fi off, so you know it works before you need it.
The assistant also refuses dangerous questions, such as child medicine doses, edible mushrooms or mixing bleach, rather than risking a wrong answer. OfflineVault is open source under GPL-3.0, and its test results are public: on 150 emergency questions, the default model answered 63 fully correctly, 73 partially, 4 wrongly and none harmfully.
Key features
- Free Field Guide: 95 articles on water, fire, first aid, medicine, food, shelter, electricity and evacuation, plus CDC, FEMA, MedlinePlus and iFixit content and world maps.
- On-device AI assistant that answers only from books on your machine, with page citations, and labels unproven claims unverified.
- Offline world maps, including street-level maps of the whole world (139 GB).
- Videos with searchable transcripts.
- Readiness drill that checks the whole library with Wi-Fi off.
- Wi-Fi sharing to phones in the household (Household plan) and an ovsync CLI that brings the same library to Linux and Windows via Kiwix.
- Open source, GPL-3.0.
Who it is for
OfflineVault fits households that want a reliable source of emergency know-how when the network fails, and people in rural or disaster-prone areas who cannot count on connectivity. It also fits Mac users who want a private, offline-first reference library with an AI assistant that shows its sources instead of guessing.
Pricing
OfflineVault is sold as a one-time purchase, yours to keep. Free costs $0 and includes the app, the Field Guide, CDC and FEMA content, government manuals, MedlinePlus, iFixit and world maps, with no account needed. Core costs $149 once and adds a year of new editions (then $39 a year if you want refreshes), WikiMed, WikEM, MDWiki, military medicine, NHS Medicines A to Z, the top 50,000 Wikipedia articles, Appropedia and three Stack Exchange sites, a 4B assistant model, and covers 2 Macs. Household costs $249 once (then $59 a year) and adds all of Wikipedia with images, street-level world maps, a larger model and Wi-Fi sharing, covering 6 Macs. Founder costs $299 once, only during the launch, and includes 3 years of Household, Core for life, and your name in the credits.
Sources and verification: Information in this article is based on the official website (https://offlinevault.dev/) and the launch announcement, checked on 9 November 2026. Prices may change; see the official website for current pricing.
Image: offlinevault.dev (official visual)
