Self-hosted. Reads your real inbox and calendar. Zero data to OpenAI.
Good morning. Three things worth knowing:
Also: the Stripe webhook you were debugging on Friday started failing again at 06:17. Logs show a signature_verification_failed error. Want me to open a PR with the fix Maya suggested?
An example morning brief. One prompt, four tools, zero context pasted.
What it actually does
Gmail, Calendar, Tasks, Slack, Linear, Notion, GitHub, WhatsApp. Connected via OAuth, indexed locally, queried inline.
"Hey Kerno" from your laptop. Hands-free morning brief while you make coffee.
7am morning brief. Pre-meeting nudges. Overnight Dev Mode opens PRs on your GitHub.
One docker compose up. Runs on Hetzner, Fly, Railway, AWS, or a Mac mini under your desk. Your inbox never reaches a vendor.
PR-first, never auto-merged. You review while you drink coffee.
Powered by your choice of —
Switch providers from the admin UI without redeploying. Use a fully local model and Kerno is end-to-end offline.
Why not the others
| Kerno | ChatGPT Team | AnythingLLM | Notion AI | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Self-hosted | ||||
| Reads your real email & calendar | ||||
| Voice + wake word | ||||
| Writes code on your own GitHub | ||||
| Proactive nudges | ||||
| White-label / rebrand | ||||
| No data retention by LLM provider | ||||
| Mature brand, huge user base | ||||
| Free & open-source | ||||
| Works inside Notion | ||||
| Price | $899 one-time | $300/yr/user | Free / OSS | $96/yr/user |
Comparison reflects public pricing as of April 2026. Feature checks based on vendor documentation.
Pricing
Buy once, run forever on your own server. 7-day free trial first if you want — 14-day money-back on every paid tier.
For solo operators and small teams running their own instance.
Never pay again. All future updates included — forever.
Rebrand Kerno for your clients. Sell it as yours.
Not sure yet? Run the free 7-day trial on your own server first. Every paid licence also has a 14-day money-back guarantee.
Done for you
I'll deploy Kerno on your infrastructure, wire it to your actual stack, and train the team. Fixed-price engagements from two weeks to three months.
Common questions
Drop your email at /trial. We email you a trial license key plus a one-line Docker command. You run Kerno on your own server, fully featured, for 7 days. No credit card.
After day 7 the app shows a banner saying the trial expired. You then have a 7-day grace period before functionality is locked. To convert, paste a paid license key into the same instance — your data stays put, no migration.
Don't want to convert? Do nothing. The app locks itself and you can uninstall whenever.
Yes — the Docker compose file works anywhere Docker does. Railway, Fly, Hetzner, DigitalOcean, AWS, or a home Mac mini. The license is tied to the instance, not the host.
Yes, by default model inference goes to whichever LLM provider you choose (Mistral, OpenAI, Groq, Anthropic). Two things make that different from ChatGPT though:
The bigger point is that Kerno itself — your inbox index, conversation history, learned preferences — never leaves your server.
Any OpenAI-compatible API (Mistral, OpenAI, Groq, Together AI, your own vLLM/Ollama), plus the Anthropic API directly for Claude models. Switch providers from the admin UI — no redeploys.
Yes. Email me and I'll issue a new Lifetime key for the difference ($1,100). No hoops.
Your installation keeps running forever. You stop receiving new feature updates after 12 months, but can pay $299/yr to stay current — or ignore it. Your perpetual license never expires.
14-day money-back, no questions. If it doesn't work for you, email me and I'll refund fully.
Email me. First response within 48 hours. Real bugs get fixed; feature requests get queued. You're not dealing with a support org — you're dealing with the person who wrote the code.
Not yet. Today it's single-user (allowlist multiple emails, but all see the same data). Multi-user is on the roadmap for v1.1. If you need it sooner, that's a consulting engagement.
Stop pasting context
One docker compose. Five minutes. Zero data leaves your box.
Or just notify me at launch — no other emails.