Your Manuscript Stays on Your Hard Drive.
Ishvana is a desktop app, not a service. No cloud sync you didn't ask for. No training on your words. No SaaS company holding the door open to your manuscript. Your drive, your work, your rules — and the app keeps working the day the company that made it disappears, because none of it depends on a server being up.
Every Cloud-Based Writing Tool
Runs on someone else's server. Your manuscript lives on someone else's hard drive, gets indexed by someone else's database, and is one Terms of Service update away from being training data for a system you never agreed to help train. Even the honest ones can be subpoenaed, breached, acquired, or just shut down.
Ishvana
A native desktop application. No backend server, no account, no cloud database. SQLite on your disk, .docx files on your disk, zero telemetry. The only manuscript you actually control is one that never leaves your machine, and that's what you're buying here.
Why a Desktop App in 2026
Desktop software is out of fashion. SaaS is easier to monetize, easier to update, and much easier to lock users into. Everyone builds web apps because that's where the VC money goes. Authors have been treated as captive revenue streams long enough, though.
Ishvana is a desktop app on purpose. You own the software, you own the data, you own the workflow. If Swordsfall Studios disappeared tomorrow, your tools would still work, your manuscripts would still open, and your lore database would still be readable in any SQLite viewer. That's how software used to work, and it's how it should still work for something as personal as a novel.
What "Offline" Actually Means
Ishvana is not a web app pretending to be a desktop app. There's no backend server, no account, and no cloud database you get silently synced to. The entire application runs on your machine, using your storage, your CPU, and (if you want it) your GPU.
Local SQLite Database
All your lore, relationships, outlines, and project metadata live in a SQLite file on your hard drive. Standard format, readable by any SQLite tool, yours to back up, inspect, or export at any time.
Standard .docx Files
Your manuscripts save as regular .docx files on disk. Not a proprietary format, not a cloud-synced blob, not a thing that only Ishvana can read. You can email them, version-control them, or open them in Word.
Zero Telemetry
No analytics. No usage tracking. No "help us improve Ishvana" pings. The app doesn't report how often you open it, what you write, or which features you use. The only outbound traffic is license validation and any external calls you explicitly configure, both broken down in the Transparency section below.
Weekly License Check
Ishvana checks your license key at activation, then roughly once a week after that, to make sure it hasn't been refunded or revoked. If you're offline when the check fires, the app assumes you're still valid and tries again later. No usage data goes with it.
Exactly What Leaves Your Machine
"Private" is a claim that only means something when it's specific. Here's the full list of network activity Ishvana is capable of, and how you control each one.
- License Activation
- One HTTPS call to the license server when you first enter your key. A signed license file is cached locally and trusted indefinitely between re-validations.
- Weekly License Re-Validation
- Roughly once a week the app sends your license key to our server to confirm it's still in good standing. This is how refund and revocation enforcement work — it's a license check, not telemetry. No usage data, no writing, nothing about what you do with the app. If you're offline when it fires, the app assumes you're still valid and tries again later.
- Update Checks
- Optional. Can be disabled. When enabled, fetches a version file from the update server. No telemetry attached.
- External Model Calls (Optional)
- Only if you configure a cloud API key. Goes to Claude, OpenAI, OpenRouter, or wherever you pointed it. Disabled by default.
- Web Research (Optional)
- Only when you explicitly use the research browser. Visits websites you navigate to, same as a regular browser.
- Wikipedia Fact-Checks (Optional)
- Only when World Knowledge is actively fact-checking a passage. Can be disabled.
- Nothing Else
- Ever. No analytics, no crash reports (unless you opt in), no usage tracking, no A/B testing, no session replay.
Privacy Questions
Does Ishvana ever send my manuscript anywhere?
Only if you explicitly configure a cloud model provider and ask it to operate on your prose. Every external call you trigger is an explicit action. No background uploads, no sync. If you never configure a cloud key, no part of your manuscript ever leaves your machine.
Can I use Ishvana with zero internet after activation?
Yes. Fully. The only features that require internet are optional cloud calls, which are off by default. The editor, Legendry, Plot, Timeline, Mechanics, Language, Maps, ProseGuard, Lorekeeper, and the publishing pipeline all work on a completely offline machine.
What if Swordsfall Studios goes under?
Your Ishvana installation keeps working. Your license is already activated. Your .docx files and SQLite database are standard formats readable by any tool. There's no server you're dependent on. Your work belongs to you, permanently, regardless of our business situation.
How is this different from running a web app on your own server?
Self-hosted web apps still require you to run a server, maintain a database, handle updates, and trust the app's network code. Ishvana is a native Windows application. No server to run. No database to maintain. The only network calls are listed in the Transparency section above — a weekly license re-validation and any external model calls you explicitly configure. No hidden traffic.
Is my license checked every time I launch the app?
No. License validation happens once when you enter your key. After that, the check is cached locally. You can unplug from the internet for months and the app will keep launching normally.