Chat, contacts, leads and email. One app, on your own machine.

No. Couchwork is an independent, open-source app for small teams: chat, contacts, leads and email with an AI assistant, all on your own machine. It isn’t affiliated with, or endorsed by, Slack.

Any mailbox that supports IMAP and SMTP, including Gmail, Microsoft 365, most web hosts and your own mail server. Gmail and Microsoft mailboxes need an app password rather than your normal one when you connect them. People can still sign in to Couchwork itself with Google or Microsoft.

Chat, contacts and leads are in Postgres on the machine that runs your Couchwork server, with files on its disk, and the built-in nightly backups cover them, with an encrypted off-site copy if you set one up. Email stays with your mail provider; the server keeps a rebuildable local copy so the app is fast.

Only if an admin switches it on, and only for the person asking. Personal contacts and email are used only in a private chat with the AI, never in a channel. The email helpers (drafting, spam check, priority flag) are separate switches, and each mailbox owner opts their own mailbox in. You can use a local model so none of it leaves your network.

Not unless you say so. By default it prepares email drafts for you to review and send yourself, shows a card for you to confirm before a lead is created, and its spam and priority marks are suggestions only. Nothing is moved or deleted automatically. The exceptions are your own tasks and reminders, which it adds or ticks off straight away when you ask, and lead follow-ups: those are left as drafts for you to send, unless an admin switches on send automatically for a sales pipeline.

Yes. Upload a PDF, Word (.docx) or text file, type /document in your chat with the AI and pick it. The AI then answers questions from it and says where the answer came from. Documents are private to you unless you choose to share them, are only used in your private chat with the AI, and scanned PDFs (images of text) can’t be read yet.

Yes. On a sales pipeline, an admin turns on follow-ups. If you email a lead and they haven’t replied after a few days (3 by default), Couchwork writes a follow-up in the same conversation, then a second one a week later, and no more than that. It stops as soon as they reply, the lead is won or lost, or you pause it. Follow-ups are drafts for you to review and send unless you choose to send them automatically, and they only go out in working hours on weekdays. The AI writes them, or you can use your own templates.

Yes. In your private chat with the AI, ask things like “how’s our sales looking?”, “who are our top sales people this quarter?” or “how many deals closed this month compared to last month?”. It answers in a sentence and draws a bar or pie chart, with buttons to download it as an image (for a slide) or the data as a CSV. The figures are calculated exactly from your leads, not guessed by the AI: a sale is a lead in a Won stage, credited to whoever it’s assigned to. Admins and managers see the whole team; everyone else sees only their own deals.

Yes. An admin switches on the website form, copies one line of code onto the site, and enquiries arrive as leads in the stage you choose. Your server needs to be reachable from the internet for this, for example through a domain or tunnel. Cloudflare Turnstile is optional and uses your own free keys.

With Anthropic or OpenAI it does, plus your own API key. With a local model through Ollama it doesn’t. Optional web search uses Tavily and needs internet too. Chat, contacts, leads and email work on your local network without any of them.

It’s designed for small businesses and teams: one server and one database, with no per-user licence fees.

Yes. An admin registers a sign-in app with Google or Microsoft (or any OpenID Connect provider) and pastes its details into Settings; step-by-step instructions are shown there. People then use a “Continue with Google” or “Continue with Microsoft” button. Signing in doesn’t create accounts by itself: people need an existing account or an invite code. An admin can also require single sign-on for everyone except admins. It works in the browser, desktop and mobile apps. Your server needs an https address for it.

Yes. People turn it on in their profile with any authenticator app and get one-time backup codes. Admins can require it for everyone, and reset it for someone who has lost their phone.

The server backs up the database and uploaded files every night (you choose when, and how long to keep them) and tells admins if one fails. You can add an encrypted copy that’s sent to cloud storage, another server, Nextcloud or a USB drive or NAS, and download an encrypted backup whenever you like. Restoring is one command and works onto a brand-new machine. We recommend trying a restore once on a spare machine so you know it works.

Yes. Open your server’s address in any modern browser and sign in; there’s nothing to install.

Yes, for iPhone and Android (you build it from the open-source project). It has chat, your private chat with the AI, and a Today screen with tasks and reminders, plus push notifications for messages and when a reminder is due. Contacts, leads and email are on the desktop and browser versions for now.