A persistent desktop workspace for deep work — parallel timers, sticky markdown notes, habit heatmap, and tasks. All offline. All yours.
Every feature in Nerva was added because the alternative cost us a flow state.
Run three deep-work sessions at once — writing, code, and reading — each on its own clock. Every tick is wall-clock anchored, so timers stay accurate through laptop sleep, suspend, and full reboots.
No more "I closed my laptop for lunch and the pomodoro lied to me."
Pop a note out of the main window and it floats on top of your editor, browser, Slack — wherever you are. Write in markdown: headings, bold, lists, code. It autosaves every 250 ms into an append-only log.
The thought you almost lost is now one keystroke away.
Tap once for done, twice for partial, three times for missed. Streaks compute themselves. A full-year heatmap shows you the shape of your consistency — the same way GitHub shows contributions, except this one is about your life.
Hit Ctrl + Space from anywhere — even from a popped-out sticky note — to summon the command palette. Start a timer, jump to a habit, open the heatmap, switch theme, snooze a task. Never reach for the mouse.
Dock the task panel inside Nerva, or pop it out as a tiny always-on-top widget you can park in the corner while you work in your IDE. Priority dots, due times, one-click complete.
No popups. No "tip of the day". No login walls.
Event-sourced SQLite log. Every keystroke is an append. The runtime replays on launch — even after a power cut, you're back exactly where you were.
The app makes no outbound calls out of the box. Anonymous usage stats (feature counts only — never your content) are strictly opt-in and can be turned off anytime in Settings.
Press the ☼ in the top bar to toggle. Sticky notes keep their amber tone in both — by design.
Native Rust core + Tauri shell. Not Electron. Your fan won't spin up because you opened a timer.
Ctrl+Space command palette. Ctrl+H habits. Ctrl+T tasks. Ctrl+N new note. Configurable.
Apache-2.0. The full source — Rust core, React UI, build scripts — is on GitHub. Audit it, fork it, ship your own.
One file per platform. No installer wizard tricks.
sudo snap install nervawinget install Bytical.Nervayay -S nerva-desktop-bin (Arch / AUR)
More info → Run anyway, or install the Bytical trust certificate
once to silence the warning forever. The Microsoft Store build (in review) bypasses this.
Yes — Apache-2.0 licensed open source. No paid tier, no upgrade nag.
Yes. There is no cloud component. All data lives in a local SQLite database on your machine. Nerva is fully usable on a plane, in a tunnel, or on day-3 of an internet outage.
Not unless you say so. Out of the box the app makes zero outbound network calls except update checks. On first launch it asks whether you'd like to share anonymous weekly usage stats — app version, OS, and feature counts (e.g. “12 notes”), never the contents of your notes or tasks. Decline once and it never asks again; change your mind anytime in Settings → About.
Nerva uses wall-clock math, not interval ticks. When the machine wakes, each running timer computes now − started_at and shows the real elapsed time. No phantom pauses.
Yes. Notes autosave every 250 ms into an append-only event log. On next launch the app replays the log to reconstruct in-memory state — including cursor position.
Nerva is signed with a self-signed certificate during early releases. Click More info → Run anyway, or install the Bytical trust certificate once to silence the warning forever. The Microsoft Store build (in review) bypasses this entirely.
Not yet — macOS support is on the roadmap. Today Nerva ships for Linux (Ubuntu 22.04 / 24.04, Fedora, Arch) and Windows 10 / 11.
Open an issue at github.com/piyushptiwari1/nerva/issues. We read every one.