jñāna · Sanskrit · wisdom born of direct experience
Technology that wants nothing from you.
Beautiful, free apps for meditation, reflection, and presence.
- No ads
- No tracking
- No paywalls
A Jnana Lab instrument · free on iOS
Orb
A living companion for breath, stillness, and sleep.
A meditation app that begins with one beautiful thing: your breath. The orb expands and settles at a slow, steady pace. Follow it, and attention drifts gently back to the present moment.
No account. No streak. No notifications begging you back.
Meet OrbA Jnana Lab instrument · coming to iOS
Vasistha
A daily reader for the Yoga Vasistha, the Sanskrit dialogue on mind and reality.
Less a sacred book than an invitation to find out what you are. It runs to thirty thousand verses, so Vasistha gives you one of them a day, in language you can read now, with one question to carry.
365 passages, the whole text bundled in the app, and no account to create.
Meet Vasistha
A Jnana Lab instrument
Tender
A private place to write to the child you once were.
Choose a childhood photo. Write what needs saying, name what you feel, and notice where it lives in your body. Tender keeps the photo, the words, and the pause together in one private place.
Forever free, offline, and encrypted on your device.
Meet TenderWhat if technology served life?
Jnana Lab is an experiment in answering that question: technology whose incentives are aligned with the well-being of the people who use it.
No advertisers to please. No investors to satisfy. No engagement metrics to feed. The only stakeholder is you.
The community shapes what gets built. The finances stay open. And when there is more than enough, the surplus flows outward.
The goal is flourishing.
Principles & commitments
Five things that will stay true
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Free, for everyone
Useful tools will not be locked behind paywalls. Ever.
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Private by default
Your attention, behavior, and data are not products. Nothing is collected that the tools don’t need to function.
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Guided by community
The people who use the tools help decide their future.
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Open by default
Finances, priorities, and decisions stay visible. Trust requires visibility.
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Surplus flows outward
We serve a community; we don’t own one. When there is more than enough, the excess leaves the building.
Governance
A circle, not a funnel
- 1People use the apps, freely.
- 2Some choose to support, voluntarily.
- 3Supporters suggest and vote on what comes next.
- 4Jnana Lab builds it.
- 5The apps improve for everyone, supporter or not.
- 6When there is surplus, it flows to causes.
- 7The circle widens.
Community
The circle has a room
Where the circle actually turns
Everything the circle decides starts as a conversation. Discord is where people using the tools ask for help, report what is broken, suggest what should exist next, and help choose what gets built.
Join the DiscordFree to join. You can read without ever posting.
The manifesto
What we believe technology should do
- Technology should help beings flourish. Not addiction.
- Technology should create trust. Not surveillance.
- Technology should deepen wisdom. Not manipulation.
- Technology should serve life. Not consume it.
We built Jnana Lab to find out what that looks like.
About
Hello. I’m Nicolas.
I believe technology can ease the suffering of sentient beings and bring more compassion into the world. That belief is the reason Jnana Lab exists, and it is the only brief the tools here have to answer to.
Work with me
If you are building something that serves people instead of extracting from them, I would like to hear about it. Write to me to collaborate, to get help bringing your own project to life, or just to say hi.