Axella

Free, open-source message assistant for your Mac

Your attention, on your terms.

Take back control of your time. Axella gathers your mail, messages, calls and calendar into a short digest at the times you choose, so you can be fully present at work, with family and with friends. Lives on your Mac mini at home. Available on your laptop, phone and tablet.

Get Axella Watch the 90-second demo

Free, open source and non-commercial. Hosted in your home, 100% your data.

Afternoon · 15:30

Nothing urgent.

One reply ready for your approval.

Work is quiet. Dinner at 19:00.

The problem

A ping. A badge. Just in case.

You sink into real work, then the itch to check mail “just in case”. Usually nothing's there, but the damage is done. Work follows you home. Family follows you to work.

“Before the first coffee, between meetings, at dinner. Part of your brain is always waiting for the next message, so you never really go deep.”

Morten Toft, maker of Axella · Why I made it

Axella flips it around: your messages wait for you, and arrive as one calm digest at the times you choose.

See it

Take 90 seconds. Eliminate hours of interruptions.

Every interruption costs about 23 minutes of focus. See how a day of pings becomes one calm digest — what Axella hears, what it holds, and what it hands you to approve.

Played from axella.dev. No tracking, no third-party player.

Read the film as text 90 s · no narration

0:00A ping. A badge. Just in case. Every interruption costs about 23 minutes (research: Gloria Mark, UC Irvine). Work follows you home. Family follows you to work. What if it all waited for you?

0:22One place: mail, messages, WhatsApp, calls and calendar.

0:28You set the rhythm. People who check mail three times a day feel less stressed (Kushlev & Dunn, 2015). Axella brings it to you then.

0:34Four things. One minute. Every digest opens with whether you need to act — read it, or listen. “Nothing urgent. One reply ready: Lee asks to move Thursday's review to Friday. Overdue: the school needs the signed trip form today. Family group: 12 messages about Sunday lunch, nobody asked you anything. Calendar: one meeting at 16:00, dinner with Jamie at 19:00.”

0:44Work gets focus. Private life gets presence. In work hours, private waits. In the evening, work goes quiet.

0:50Axella drafts. You decide. Replies are ready and waiting. Nothing is sent without your tap.

1:02And a little more: Ask Axella — answers from your own messages, with sources. Missed a call? She takes a message, in Danish or English, and it's in your next digest. Receipts, found and totalled — monthly spend per vendor, from your own mail.

1:16Cloud assistants want a copy of your life. Every email, every family chat, every calendar entry. Where does it go? Who reads it?

1:20She lives in your home. On a Mac mini you own. No Axella cloud, no account.

1:25Axella. Your attention, on your terms. axella.dev

Try it yourself

A guided demo of Axella with example data, right in your browser. Approve a reply, change your digest times, pull in the next batch of messages. Nothing is sent, and nothing is stored on axella.dev – one functional cookie remembers your demo in this browser for 30 days. No tracking.

What Axella does

From constant noise to one calm moment.

Four quiet steps, all on a machine you own.

  1. 01

    It listens everywhere

    Email accounts, iMessage and SMS, WhatsApp, Signal, calls and calendar. Axella reads them on your own machine, so you don't have to keep checking.

  2. 02

    It holds the noise

    Nothing pings. New messages wait for your next digest; only what's urgent by your VIP list and rules breaks through. Every item is tagged work or private, so you can look at one world at a time.

  3. 03

    It tells you when you choose

    At the times you pick, a short spoken digest. The first sentence answers whether you need to do anything — often “Nothing urgent.”

  4. 04

    It drafts. You decide.

    Replies are prepared and waiting. Approve, edit or discard. Nothing is sent without your tap.

More than a digest

Smart functions that move things forward, at work and at home.

Axella doesn’t just hold the noise. She speeds up what comes after: replies drafted, receipts found, tasks ready for Claude, briefs on what you follow. All of it runs on the Mac mini, and everything that acts waits for your tap.

Act in seconds

Ask Axella

Ask about any mail, task, project or receipt. Answers show their sources; anything to do comes back as a card you tap.

New mail

Say who, what and the tone. Three versions from your earlier mail with that person, saved to Drafts in the right mailbox.

Calendar suggestions

A time agreed in a message becomes an “Add to calendar” button — after checking it isn't there already.

Filing

A suggested folder for every message, whole threads in one move, and Axella remembers where each sender goes. Old mail stuck in the inbox? One re-scan sorts all of it.

Keep order

Receipts and spend

Every receipt and invoice in one register, amounts read from the PDF, spend per month and vendor. Send them to your finance platform’s receipt inbox with a tap — or per vendor, automatically, once you switch it on.

Newsletters

Senders grouped by company. Unsubscribe with one tap, or all of a company's addresses at once.

Projects

Messages, tasks, notes, links and documents per project. Axella suggests a new one when a topic keeps coming up.

To do and reminders

Turn any item into a task, with recurring reminders for rent, renewals and birthdays. Add details to any task; one tap opens it in Claude with the details filled in, ready to work on. You review and send.

Know more

Topic briefs New

Research and news on your schedule, like a Monday brief on electric cars or what's on this weekend. Three to five items with sources, never the same story twice. Listen after your digest, from the lock screen or in the car. Only the search leaves your home.

Knowledge base

Facts and standard answers your drafts use, marked “Based on …”. New ones are suggested from your sent mail; nothing is used until you approve it.

Insights

Who and what took your attention this week, month or year, and whether it's trending up.

Waiting on others

You asked, nobody answered. Axella keeps track and tells you when a reply is overdue, so nothing slips.

While you're away

Call agent

Optional. Calls you miss are answered in Danish or English; you get a summary, a callback time and an SMS draft.

Out of office

Away texts per mailbox, a reminder the evening before, and the call agent switches to an away greeting.

Holidays and days off

Pause the digests, keep only urgent checks, or stop everything. “Run sweep now” whenever you want a fresh one.

On your phone

A Home Screen app with push, swipe to handle items, and “Axella digest” for Siri and CarPlay.

Inside Axella

The dashboard, on your laptop, phone and tablet.

The real Axella app, shown with made-up data. It follows your light or dark setting, like this page.

Axella's Today view: four things need you, the overdue school form first, then today's reply to Lee with a draft ready, beside the latest briefing and your dayAxella's Today view: four things need you, the overdue school form first, then today's reply to Lee with a draft ready, beside the latest briefing and your day
Today. What needs you now, most urgent first, with replies already drafted. The latest briefing and your day sit alongside.
Axella on an iPhone: the same Today view as a Home Screen app, with Today, Briefing, Ask and To do in the tab barAxella on an iPhone: the same Today view as a Home Screen app, with Today, Briefing, Ask and To do in the tab bar
On your phone. A Home Screen app with push. Today, Briefing, Ask and To do are one tap away.
Axella's Briefing view: the afternoon digest with the spoken version and every item sorted by when it needs youAxella's Briefing view: the afternoon digest with the spoken version and every item sorted by when it needs you
Briefing. The full digest, to read or hear, sorted by when each thing needs you.
Axella's To do view: your own tasks by today, this week and later, with a tab for what you're waiting onAxella's To do view: your own tasks by today, this week and later, with a tab for what you're waiting on
To do. Your own tasks and what you're waiting for from others, in one place.
Axella's Topic briefs page: an electric-cars brief with three items and sources, and a weekend brief with a note from your calendarAxella's Topic briefs page: an electric-cars brief with three items and sources, and a weekend brief with a note from your calendar
Topic briefs. Research and news on your schedule, with sources. Only the search leaves your home.
Axella's Mailbox view: filing suggestions to approve, with tabs for newsletters and cleanupAxella's Mailbox view: filing suggestions to approve, with tabs for newsletters and cleanup
Mailbox. Filing, newsletters and cleanup. Approve, and Axella moves the mail.
Axella's Receipts view: monthly spend from receipts and invoices found in mailAxella's Receipts view: monthly spend from receipts and invoices found in mail
Receipts. Spend per month and vendor, from your own mail.
Axella's Knowledge view: facts drafts may use, and how Axella learns from sent mailAxella's Knowledge view: facts drafts may use, and how Axella learns from sent mail
Knowledge. Facts your drafts may use. Suggestions wait for your approval.

Why Axella

She lives in your home.

AI inbox assistants are coming as cloud services. To summarise and draft, they need a copy of your entire communication life on someone else's servers, under someone else's terms. Axella makes the opposite choice.

  • Hosted by you. Axella runs on a machine you own and can unplug — a Mac mini on your shelf, not a data centre. You use it from your laptop, phone and tablet.
  • 100% your data. Messages, digests, drafts, history and settings are stored only on that machine. No Axella account, and no Axella server ever holds your messages.
  • Private contacts. Mark someone as private and Axella only notes that they wrote – who and where, never the text.
  • No one in between. No company can read, mine, sell, train on or lose your data — because no company holds it.
  • Transparent and free. The code is open to inspect, so “private” is something you can verify, not a promise you have to trust.
  • Non-commercial, on purpose. No paid version, no ads, no tracking, no affiliate links. What Axella costs to run goes to Apple, Anthropic and the other providers, never to Axella. Accelathon publishes it; it doesn’t sell it.
  • You decide what leaves. Claude, on your own subscription, reads what each digest needs. Topic briefs send only their searches; the call agent and problem reports are optional. Fully local processing is the goal.
What Axella is — and is not
Axella isAxella is not
Self-hosted in your homeA cloud service that holds or harvests your data
Yours to inspect, run and unplugA subscription or account you are locked into
A calm, scheduled digest of everythingAnother inbox or notification feed
A boundary keeper between work and privateA tool that replies on your behalf
A drafter of replies you approveAn autonomous agent that acts alone

The cloud will compete on convenience. Axella competes on trust: the most personal assistant you have should not live on someone else's computer.

Product vision

Give people back control of their attention.

Axella brings all of your communication into one calm place and lets you decide when to be aware of it — so work gets focus, private life gets presence, and nothing important slips through. She does it from inside your home, on hardware you own, with your data under your control at all times.

Private by design

Hosted in your home, 100% your data. No Axella cloud, no account to sign up for.

Be where you are

Every item is tagged work or private, so you look at one world at a time, at your desk, at dinner or on the sideline.

Calm by default

No badge storm. One push per digest, and only urgent items in between.

You set the rhythm

Morning, midday and afternoon by default. Change the times, add days off, or pause for a holiday.

One place

Every mailbox, chat, call and calendar in one clear picture.

You stay in charge

Axella drafts. You decide. Nothing leaves without you.

A weekday with Axella default times — yours to change

07:30Morning 11:30Midday 15:30Afternoon 20:30Sunday: week ahead
Urgent checks every 15 minutes, 07:00–22:45 Digests

How it's built

Simple. Local. Yours.

Axella runs on an always-on machine at home — a Mac mini works well. It reads your streams, understands them with an AI model, and prepares short digests and draft replies. Everything it stores stays on that machine, and you reach it from your laptop, phone and tablet over your private network.

Your streams

Email accountsIn Apple Mail · Outlook stays your app
iMessage · SMSIn Messages
WhatsAppWhatsApp Desktop
SignalOptional · receive only, via signal-cli
Calendar · contactsIn Calendar and Contacts
Missed callsOptional call agent

Mac mini · always on

MacuseReads Mail, Messages, Calendar and Contacts on the Mac
ClaudeWrites digests and drafts with read-only tools
Axella serviceSchedule, rules, local store and dashboard

You · over Tailscale

Spoken digest
Dashboard on phone and laptop
Drafts to approve

What you need

Every part, and where it runs. Prices as of November 2026.

Yes, it costs you some hardware and an hour to set it all up. Once you see your messages through Axella, you won’t look back.

Use Outlook? Keep it. Axella reads mail through Apple Mail on the Mac mini, so you add the same accounts there once. Drafts and filing show up in Outlook. Work Microsoft 365 accounts need your IT’s OK and a quick test first. How to set it up

  • Mac mini, always on

    The home server, from $899. Axella keeps working while the screen is locked. A small UPS is recommended.

    Minimum: a Mac with Apple silicon (M1 or later), 16 GB memory, 256 GB storage, macOS 15 or later. Choose 512 GB if your mailboxes are large: Apple Mail keeps a full local copy.
    Looking ahead: more memory lets more of the AI run at home as local models arrive. 32 GB or more keeps that option open. The more Mac you have, the more stays home.

    At home

  • Macuse

    macuse.app — gives Claude read access to Mail, Messages, Calendar and Contacts on the Mac. Lifetime licence, $49 one-time. The free tier stops at 100 tool calls a day, which Axella uses up quickly.

    At home

  • Claude Code and Claude desktop

    The intelligence: Claude Code runs every digest on your subscription; the desktop app is optional. Suggested licence: Claude Max (from $100/month) for several Opus digests a day and frequent checks. Pro ($20/month) is enough to try it.

    Anthropic

  • Tailscale

    A private network between the Mac mini and your phone and laptop. Nothing on the Mac mini is open to the internet. Free Personal plan.

    Private network

  • Call agent optional

    A Twilio number takes calls you miss; a small Vercel app (with Upstash Redis) lets Claude Haiku take a message, in Danish or English, with an ElevenLabs voice. Uses an Anthropic API key. Pay as you go. Its own repository, axella-voice.

    Twilio · Vercel

What it costs

Everything, with no hidden parts. US list prices as of November 2026, before sales tax or VAT.

About $950 to start, then $20–100 a month for Claude.

Already have a Mac that can stay on? Then the one-time cost is just Macuse, $49.

Non-commercial, on purpose. No paid version, no ads, no tracking, no affiliate links. Every cost here goes to the providers, never to Axella.

Axella
PartOne-timeMonthly
Mac mini M6, 16 GB / 256 GB – enough for today; 512 GB for large mailboxes, 32 GB+ for local AI laterfrom $899–
Macuse Lifetime licence$49–
Claude subscription Pro to try, Max recommended–$20 / $100
Tailscale Personal plan–$0
signal-cli optional, for Signal$0–
Electricity the Mac mini idles at a few watts–about $1–2
UPS optional, keeps it running through short power cutsabout $80–
To start with Pro$948about $22
Recommended with Max$948about $102
Call agent, optional
PartPrice
Twilio phone number$1.15 a month (US), $15 a month (Denmark)
Answered calls Twilio voice and speechabout $0.08 a minute
Claude Haiku Anthropic API key, prepaidabout 1–3¢ a call
Vercel and Upstash Redis$0 on the free tiers
Example 20 missed calls of 2 minutesabout $4 a month, plus the number

Your mobile operator may charge for forwarding calls. Set spend limits on Twilio and the API key.

  1. Now

    Personal assistant

    Runs on one home server. Spoken digests, drafted replies, Topic briefs, Signal and private contacts.

  2. Next

    Shareable

    Simple setup, documented connectors, focus hours per world (work quiet in the evening), and a clear “what leaves my home” overview.

  3. Later

    Fully local

    Local AI and speech models, so nothing needs to leave the home. More sources and household modes.

How to get it

Free. Shared. Yours to run.

An always-on Mac at home, a few connectors and your own digest times.

  1. 01

    Prepare a machine

    Axella lives on a Mac mini at home, always on and quietly in the background.

  2. 02

    Get the code

    Clone the Axella repository. The call agent is a second, optional one.

  3. 03

    Connect your streams

    Connect mail, messages, calls and calendar, and choose your digest times.

  4. 04

    Enjoy the quiet

    Turn off the notifications. Axella tells you what matters.

git clone https://github.com/AccelathonDK/axella.git
Read the setup guide Try the demo first

Setup in 60 seconds

Read the film as text 60 s · no narration

0:00Axella lives in your home. Here’s how she moves in.

0:0601 · The hardware. One small machine that stays on: a Mac that stays on (a Mac mini is ideal), Claude Pro or Max on your own subscription, and Macuse, which lets Claude read Mail, Calendar and Messages. Already have a Mac at home? You’re halfway there.

0:1802 · Installing Axella. Get the code. Free and open: every line is yours to read.

0:24Connect your streams. Mail, Calendar, Messages and WhatsApp on the Mac. Claude reads them through Macuse, read-only.

0:29Make it yours. Your rules and the people who matter, in two plain files: AXELLA.md and contacts.md.

0:35Switch on the rhythm. Sign in to Claude on the Mac, and the schedule starts by itself: digests at 07:30, 11:30 and 15:30, urgent checks every 15 minutes. Comfortable with Terminal? Plan an afternoon.

0:4103 · Making it available. Only for you. Anywhere. Tailscale links your own devices in a private network. No open ports, nothing on the internet.

0:47On your phone, like any app. Add it to your Home Screen. Each digest arrives as one quiet push.

0:52Free and shared. Ready when you are. axella.dev/setup, the step-by-step guide.
  • axellaThe assistant: lives on your Mac mini at home, available on your laptop, phone and tablet.
  • axella-voiceOptional call agent: deploys to Vercel and takes a message when you can't answer. Setup
Next: shareable setup

Not ready to run it yourself? Get a note when the easy setup is ready.

Stored on Cloudflare, used only to tell you when it's ready.

Feedback

Help shape Axella.

What would make your days calmer? Axella already handles email, iMessage and SMS, WhatsApp, Signal, missed calls and your calendar. Tell us what should come next.

Morten Toft

Developer, Dad, Entrepreneur.

Axella is published by Accelathon, my holding company. The name joins accelerate with the pacing of a marathon: going fast over a long distance. Axella is that idea applied to attention.

An Accelathon project

Who's behind Axella.

I'm Morten. I have spent most of my working life building platforms and digital products for endurance sports — race timing, live results, event registration and on-site bib printing — and the company behind it became part of MYLAPS, a Garmin company.

Why I made it

I have lived with this problem for years. Running a company, timing races at weekends and having a family meant mail, messages and calls from every direction — and a phone that lit up with “New message” all day long.

That little banner is a true disruptor. For your work: it breaks the thought you were in the middle of, and finding your way back takes far longer than the glance did. And more importantly, for your brain: even when you don't open it, part of your mind stays with it — waiting, wondering, checking. Researchers call it attention residue. I call it never quite being where you are, at work or at the dinner table.

In autumn 2026 I changed jobs, and the streams multiplied: a private inbox, a new work mailbox, family chats, a holiday-home rental and a handful of projects. I decided the notifications would no longer decide for me. I wanted one calm place, and a few moments a day when I choose to look. So I built Axella on a Mac mini at home, and I use it every day.

Why it's free

An assistant that reads your mail, your messages and your family chats should be something you can inspect and run yourself — not a service you rent from someone who keeps a copy. I build products for a living; Axella is the one I give away. If it helps you get your attention back, that's the point.

All I ask in return: tell me what works, what breaks and what you'd like next.