Osmosis
Your clipboard, your notes, your documents — flowing seamlessly between every device you own.
Copy on your phone. Paste on any screen. No app-store install, no cloud account, no monthly fee — just a URL on your local network.
What's done · what's coming
Osmosis is an open-source productivity platform under active development. The clipboard-sync core, web frontend, and HTTPS pairing flow are committed in the open. Cross-platform desktop apps, full document editor, and the AI-agent launcher are next.
- Architecture & modular Python backend layout (
backend/modules/) - HTTPS server with self-signed TLS cert generation
- WebSocket clipboard broadcaster
- macOS clipboard monitor (
NSPasteboardpolling) - SQLite clip + section store
- QR-code pairing + token auth
- Web frontend (browser-based clipboard UI)
- Notebook UI with sections, search, history
- macOS Notes import + Evernote
.eneximport - Document editor (rich text, tables, code blocks)
- Markdown / AI-prompt / PRD export pipeline
- Docker container with
deploy.sh/destroy.sh
- Windows + Linux desktop apps (clipboard monitor parity with macOS)
- Native iOS & Android apps (current path: browser PWA)
- End-to-end encrypted sync across LANs (mesh mode)
- One-click agent launcher (turn a PRD into a running AI agent)
- First tagged release (
v0.1.0) with signed artefacts
Why people install Osmosis
Copy on your phone, paste on any screen
Launch osmosis on your Mac. Scan the QR code with your phone's camera. A browser tab opens — that's the entire setup. Copy a phone number, an address, a link, a screenshot on your phone, tap Send, and it lands on your Mac's clipboard in under a second. No App Store, no APK, no account.
A notebook that never forgets
Every clip you send or receive is saved automatically — text, links, images, screenshots — searchable across your whole history. Organize into sections (Work, Personal, Links). Import everything you already have from macOS Notes or Evernote in one click. Same notebook on every device.
Local-first, no cloud, no account
The sync happens directly between your devices over your Wi-Fi using encrypted WebSocket — no third-party server in the path, no internet required, nothing to subscribe to. Your data lives on hardware you own. Open-source, source-available, free to use.
Why people are getting it
You live across Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone, and Android
Apple Handoff only works inside Apple. KDE Connect doesn't cover iOS well. Osmosis works on any device with a browser — meaning your iPhone copies to your Linux workstation, your Android pastes to your Mac, and you stop emailing yourself links.
You don't want yet another cloud account
Existing sync apps (Evernote, Notion, ClipCascade-hosted) require an account, a subscription, or a server you have to maintain. Osmosis runs entirely on your own machine — the only thing the network sees is encrypted WebSocket traffic on your LAN.
You're tired of installing apps for a one-off task
Lending your phone to a friend? Borrowed laptop? Visiting a kiosk? Osmosis is a URL, not an install. Open it in any browser, paste once, close the tab. Nothing left behind.
You write a lot and want a real notebook
The Osmosis notebook handles formatted text, lists, tables, images, code blocks. Word-class editing without Word-class bloat. One-click export to clean Markdown — ready to paste into a PR description, a docs site, or an AI prompt.
You hand documents to AI agents and want it to take one click
Draft an idea in the notebook. Click Export as PRD. The document becomes a structured prompt ready to drop into Claude Code, Cursor, or any agent runner — closing the loop from "I had a thought" to "an agent is working on it."
What this technology also unlocks
Universal clipboard + searchable notebook + LAN-only encrypted sync + QR pairing + open-in-any-browser pickup is a small set of primitives that covers a surprising amount of ground. A sample of where the same plumbing is useful:
Phone-to-headless-server bridge
Paste a long command from your password manager on your phone into a headless server's browser console — no SSH key shuffling. Remote helpdesk: a user's error log lands on the tech's machine in one tap, no screensharing required. Pair-programmers across two laptops on the same call swap snippets instantly.
Capture at the point of care
Doctors photograph a scan or jot a note on a tablet at the bedside; it lands in the charting workstation. Field inspectors capture photo + observation from a phone; both flow to the desktop report draft. Lawyers paste from phone notes into laptop briefs without WiFi-sharing the whole device.
From inspiration on the go to the editing rig
Photographers move reference images and caption text between the phone and the editing workstation. Designers send hex codes, font names, and asset URLs from mobile inspiration to a desktop project. Writers turn voice-to-text on the phone into a desktop draft section in real time.
Classroom and study without an LMS account
Teachers share a clipboard with student devices without any login. Students merge whiteboard photos with their typed notes in a single notebook section. Library research collected on a phone is already in the notebook when the student sits back down at their workstation.
Use the input that works for you
Voice input on a phone becomes typed text on a desktop for users with motor impairments. Large-text editing on a tablet is presented full-size on the workstation without repositioning. One-handed capture across devices for users who can't comfortably reach across a full keyboard.
From the mobile broker app to the analyst desk
Ticker symbols, news headlines, and broker-app screenshots flow from the phone to the analyst workstation. Trade-rationale notes drafted on a phone arrive on the desk dashboard for the audit log. Same notebook, same history, on whichever screen you happen to be in front of.
Shared without anyone signing in
Family shopping list shared without an Apple ID, a Google account, or a paid app. Grandparents send phone photos to the printer-connected Mac without learning AirDrop. The kid's school iPad pastes the homework link into the home laptop so the parent can help.
One inbox for thoughts a coding agent can read
Every clip across every device feeds the same notebook a coding agent or RAG indexer can consume. Voice memo → transcribed text → AI prompt → spawned agent, all from the moment of capture. A cross-device prompt library so the same well-tuned prompt is one tap away on any screen.
Clipboard bridge with no cloud in the path
Two isolated machines on the same trusted LAN can share clipboard without any cloud provider in the chain — useful in regulated environments where a cloud copy of work is a compliance problem. Self-signed cert, encrypted WebSocket, nothing leaves the building.
Pairs with the rest of our products
Osmosis is designed to slot into the rest of the Albright Laboratories toolchain. Some of these integrations are live in MVP form; others are roadmap items that ship alongside the partner product.
With blackLimes — clipboard that follows you across LANs
When both ends sit behind a blackLimes mesh, your Osmosis clipboard works between your home and your office (or a hotel room and your home) over the encrypted WireGuard tunnel — no extra configuration, no third-party relay. Roadmap: ships alongside blackLimes v0.1.0.
With Maestro — notebook entries become work items
Export any notebook page as a Maestro work item; the queryable graph picks it up alongside email, voice, and conference channels. Captured-on-phone observations become tickets without a separate ingest step. Roadmap: ships alongside Maestro launch.
With BrightFlow — mobile-captured rationale on the trading desk
Trade-rationale notes captured on mobile (a market headline, a quick chart screenshot, a verbal observation) arrive on the BrightFlow dashboard for the audit log — closing the gap between what an operator was thinking off-desk and what the trading record shows.
With Albright Studios — voice memos into the video-script pipeline
Voice memos and script fragments captured anywhere flow into the Studios script pipeline as notebook entries ready for the next render — meaning a producer can sketch a video idea on a walk and have it in the production queue by the time they're back at the desk.
With corey-coder — pasted snippets become RAG observations
Pasted issue text, code snippets, and error logs become observations in the corey-coder RAG directly, no separate ingest step — meaning what an operator copies through Osmosis during the day is already in the recovery knowledge base by the time the agent next runs.
What other tools miss
There are good single-purpose tools in this space. None of them do everything, and most of them require either an account, a subscription, or that you stay inside one ecosystem. Osmosis sets out to combine what they each do well.
| Tool | What it does well | What's missing |
|---|---|---|
| Apple Handoff | Invisible clipboard sync | Apple-only · no Android, Windows, or Linux |
| ClipCascade | Bidirectional, E2E encrypted, text/images/files | Requires you to host a server · Wi-Fi only |
| KDE Connect | Mature, feature-rich, file transfer, notifications | Clipboard sync uneven across OSes · iOS gaps |
| Apple Notes | Clean notebook, syncs beautifully | Apple-only · no Android · no clipboard sync |
| Evernote | Powerful notebook, cross-platform | Paid · bloated · no clipboard sync · cloud-only |
| Notion | Notes + docs + organization | Requires internet · no clipboard sync · cloud-only |
| Osmosis | Clipboard sync + notebook + document editor + AI export — every OS, no account, local-first | In active development · MVP focuses on macOS desktop + any-browser phone pairing |
Open-source. Free to use.
What you get
Osmosis is being developed as an open, source-available productivity platform. The intent is that personal, household, and internal commercial use is free, forever, on as many devices as you own. Read the source. Modify it for your own deployments. Suggest changes upstream.
Roadmap toward a tagged release
- Hardening the clipboard-sync MVP across browsers (Safari + Chrome quirks with the Clipboard API)
- Bringing Windows and Linux desktop monitors to parity with the macOS implementation
- Shipping the notebook + import + document editor as part of the
v0.1.0tag - Publishing signed release artefacts on the GitHub release page
For commercial bundling, OEM arrangements, or anything outside ordinary use of the released artefacts: contact legal@albrightlab.com. The latest license text lives in the repo.
Architecture notes, deployment guide, and current progress all live in the repo.
View on GitHub