Kartā
live worklog
Watch the agent think.
Every command, every file change, every reasoning step — streamed live as the agent writes them. Vibe coding, with receipts.
self-hosted · for solo developers
Vibe coding,
on your terms.
Yours doesn't need to run in someone else's cloud. Kartā turns the ChatGPT plan you already pay for into a private coding agent on a server you own. ~$15/mo. Your code never leaves your disk. Every turn sandboxed.
why bother
Three sharp opinions.
The hosted tools — Devin, zo.computer, Cursor's background agents — are real products. Pick one if you want zero setup and someone else's uptime to manage. Pick Kartā if any of these matter to you.
01 · privacy
Your code stays on your disk.
Tailscale-only. No public IP. Every secret encrypted at rest. Your repos live on a server you own — never a vendor's database, never a sandbox in someone else's data center.
02 · the unlock
You already own the agent.
Kartā runs on the ChatGPT plan you already pay for — Plus, Pro, Business, or Enterprise. No second AI subscription. The cockpit + the host: ~$15/mo on Hetzner, $0 → ~$60/mo on AWS Free Tier (≈3 months free), or €0 on a Raspberry Pi.
03 · ownership
One binary. Zero lock-in.
Walk away with your data any time — one command stops everything, your sessions and audit log stay on your disk. No SaaS contract, no hosted tenant to migrate out of, no "we're sunsetting that feature" notice on a Tuesday.
what it does
The actual cockpit, not a feature list.
Eight things that earn their pixels. Each one is the reason something else didn't quite fit your shape.
PRs in-cockpit
Open. Review. Merge.
Click Open PR. The diff, bot reviews, and checks appear in the same page. Click Squash and merge. Done — no tab-hopping to GitHub mid-session.
phone-first
Drive it from anywhere.
Deep-link any session, open it on your phone — the worklog picks up where the agent left off. Optional Telegram bridge: wire up your own bot and get pinged when long turns finish.
📲 indrasvat: [ 0:14 voice note ]
▸ whisper transcribed
"hey, also add a regression test for the
edge case I described earlier"
🪐 kartaa-bot: turn dispatched ✓
→ session 019de7…
▸ whisper transcribed
"hey, also add a regression test for the
edge case I described earlier"
🪐 kartaa-bot: turn dispatched ✓
→ session 019de7…
voice → turn
Talk to it from the beach.
With the optional Telegram bridge wired up, send a voice note — it becomes a turn. Long prompts are faster spoken. Transcription happens on your server — your audio never leaves your tailnet.
scheduled runs
Recurring agents, cron-shaped.
"Every Monday, open PRs for any dependency updates." Real agent sessions on cron, with overlap handling baked in. Telegram pings when each finishes.
computer-use
A real Linux desktop, inside your session.
When the agent needs to test the UI it just built, a real Linux desktop sits inside the cockpit. A bundled browser-automation CLI lets it verify its own work, headlessly. No competitor ships this.
host · per-turn sandbox
▸ turn starts
↳ docker run --runtime=runsc kartaa-session
✓ fresh container · gVisor kernel intercepts every syscall
▸ rm -rf /home/ubuntu
↳ confined to container · host untouched
▸ git push origin feature-x
✓ routed through bind-mounted token broker
▸ turn completes
↳ container destroyed · disk + network state gone
sandboxed by default
Every turn, in a fresh sandbox.
Every prompt-to-completion cycle runs in a fresh gVisor-isolated container. A user-space kernel intercepts every syscall; when the turn ends, the container is destroyed. Always on, no toggle. Runaway scripts and malicious tool calls can't escape into your real workspace.
instant search
Find any session, in 40ms.
Full-text across every title, every message, every turn — straight from the sidebar or ⌘K palette. Hit s to focus, type, see snippets with the match in context. It all runs on your box — your transcripts never leave the tailnet.
how it works · 30-sec version
Five boxes. That's it.
The only public-facing things are GitHub and OpenAI — both of which you already use. Kartā never serves a public IP. You reach the cockpit over your tailnet, which IS the firewall.
you
browser · phone · Telegram
→
your tailnet
the auth layer
→
your kartā server
AWS · Hetzner · Pi
→
github
your repos · the bot
+
openai
codex via your ChatGPT plan
three themes, one keystroke
Tuned, not templated.
Three carefully-paired dark palettes. Switch via the dots in the sidebar. Saved per device.
vs the alternatives
Everyone's solving the same problem.
Different bets on who manages what. The honest, qualitative cut — pricing and feature parity in this space shifts monthly.
Kartā
your ChatGPT plan + ~$15/mo
- uses the ChatGPT plan you already pay for
- code stays on your disk · tailnet-only
- every turn in a fresh gVisor sandbox
- real Linux desktop in the cockpit
- mobile-first · voice → turn via Telegram
- three swappable themes, hand-tuned
- walk away with one command
Devin
$500+/mo · hosted
- zero setup time
- full VM per session
- Cognition manages uptime
- GitLab / Bitbucket support
- multi-user / SSO / teams
- code lives in their cloud
zo.computer
subscription · browser sandbox
- zero setup time
- browser-accessible from anywhere
- they manage uptime
- vendor-managed sandbox
- state lives in their cloud
- session ends = sandbox resets
getting started
Two windows. ~30 minutes.
Plan to spend ~10 min collecting credentials in your browser, ~20 min watching the provisioning ladder run. The TUI walks you through every prereq in-line — no separate checklist. See the full install guide →
- ⭐Hetzner EU-friendly. Just a VPS that works. Recommended for new users. ~$15/mo
- AWS EC2 Already on AWS? $200 credits = ~3 months free. $0 → ~$60/mo
- Raspberry Pi You have one at home. Want €0/month. €0
# 1. download the installer — picks your platform automatically
$ open https://kartaa.pages.dev/getting-started/
# 2. mark it runnable, launch — full-screen TUI takes over
$ chmod +x ~/Downloads/kartaa-install_*
$ ~/Downloads/kartaa-install_*
# 3. ~20 min of watching the worklog scroll…
✓ tailscale joined
✓ 11 systemd units enabled
✓ kartaa-doctor: all green
# 4. it prints your URL. open it.
$ → https://kartaa-<you>.<tailnet>.ts.net/
The agent runs on someone else's GPU. Everything else can run on a server you own.
— that's the whole bet