SmallWorlds: Sovereignty Now
Everyone can build and operate their own suite of privacy-respecting, everyday software applications.
Why SmallWorlds?
Big Tech rents you access to your own digital life. SmallWorlds hands it back — to you, your family, your community.
🔑 Own your apps & your data
Your photos, files, mail and code live on infrastructure you control — not on someone else's servers, under someone else's terms of service that can change overnight.
🛡️ Privacy & control
No profiling, no data mining, no silent lock-in. You decide who gets access and when. Your identity and encryption keys are yours to govern.
🚫 No advertisements
You are the owner, not the product. No ads, no upsells, no essential feature hidden behind a "premium" paywall.
✨ One seamless suite
A full set of everyday apps behind a single sign-on with passkey support, private e-mail, and one dashboard — the convenience of Big Tech, minus the surveillance and the subscription creep.
Sign in once with your SmallWorlds ID — every app trusts the same identity.
From idea to your own digital world
The short version of how SmallWorlds turns a collection of apps into something you control.
Choose
Pick the apps your family or community needs, plus a domain.
Bootstrap
Run one guided setup to provision the server, DNS and platform — about 20 minutes to fully operational.
Use
Sign in once, then use your photos, files, mail, code and more.
Own
Keep control with GitOps updates, backups and an auditable history.
Runs on a cheap cloud VM (Hetzner today) or on any Linux machine in your own LAN — same automation, same GitOps either way.
Two repos, one pipeline
The public base ships releases; your private overlay pins one and adds what makes it yours. Argo CD keeps the server in sync with the overlay — pure GitOps.
Nothing deploys by accident: an upstream release only reaches your world when the overlay bumps its pinned ref — every change is a commit, every deploy is a pull.
The Dashboard
A unified interface for all your applications and services.
Why you should NOT use SmallWorlds 🙈
In the interest of full honesty, some excellent reasons to run away:
🧑🔧 You are the IT department
When it breaks at 2 a.m., there is no support hotline. There is only you and a terminal.
🐣 It's a prototype
Held together by YAML, caffeine, and one person's stubbornness (and a lot of help from AI).
🤷 No more good excuses
"Sorry, the cloud is down" stops working when the cloud is a little box you named and put in a datacenter yourself.
😎 You might actually enjoy it
Warning: side effects include strong opinions about Kubernetes and boring your friends at parties with the word "GitOps".
What does it cost?
Example numbers for Hetzner shared-vCPU CX pricing for Germany/Finland, checked 10 July 2026 — or skip the cloud entirely.
Family
ca. €19 / month
CX43 · 8 vCPU · 16 GB · 160 GB SSD
Community
ca. €35 / month
CX53 · 16 vCPU · 32 GB · 320 GB SSD
Many users, room to grow.
Home Server
€0 / month
Any Linux box in your LAN — same installer, optional internet exposure.
Your Data
≈ €5 / TB / month
Attached Hetzner Volume — or your own disks at home.
Your help is very welcome!
Currently a single person effort. Working prototype available
More Apps, More testing, Improved operation automation, Federation.
See status and Roadmap files at
https://github.com/stephan271/smallworlds