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Project Status & What's Coming Next

Alpha phase — an honest overview

locali is currently in an early alpha phase. This means:

  • Not yet production-ready. Features, APIs, and data structures may change without notice.
  • Not yet open source. The source code is not publicly available yet. Release is planned once the software reaches a stable state.
  • No support SLA. There are no availability guarantees and no formal support commitments.
  • Invite-based access. Access to the alpha is by invitation. If you're interested, get in touch.
  • Data protection depends on the concrete setup. locali is designed for data-sovereign operation. Whether a specific hub is operated in a legally robust way depends on hosting, configuration, AI providers, contracts, and operator processes.

The goal of this phase: test and stabilise the product together with the first real operators and communities.

Open source — planned, but not yet published

locali is planned for release as open source — under a licence that explicitly allows self-hosted deployments.

The release is planned for a later stage of development, when:

  • core features are stable and well documented
  • a clean setup guide exists
  • the project is usable by external operators without direct support

Until then, operation is based on direct contact, close feedback loops, and deliberately limited expectations.

What is currently being worked on

These are areas currently under development or where a clear need is visible.

In development

  • Improved onboarding — simpler setup experience for new operators; clearer first-time configuration without direct support
  • Extended source support — additional connector types and formats; more structured processing of municipal bulletins and official announcements; better error diagnostics during synchronisation

In preparation or under discussion

  • Groups within places — thematic sub-groups (e.g. sports group, parents' circle) with their own feed and membership
  • Improved routing tools — preview mode and dry run for routing rules; rule testing without live data
  • Public API — read access to feeds and events for third-party applications and integrations
  • Subscribable personal feeds — user-based iCal calendar for subscribing in external calendar apps; RSS feed for community content
  • Improved notifications — finer-grained control, digest mode, localised notification text

Where locali could develop next

locali is today a hub for local information and exchange. The points below are not promises, but honest orientation about possible directions.

From source to meaning. Not every external piece of information belongs in the feed. A weather warning, a council meeting, a traffic closure, a civic report — these are conceptually different things that need different treatment. One possible direction for locali: not just distributing incoming information, but classifying it better before it reaches people. What is urgent should stand out. What is context should stay that way.

Using open standards. There are established, open formats for exactly what locali maps manually today — warning systems (CAP), council information (OParl), civic issue reporting (Open311), mobility data (GTFS, DATEX II). These standards are used in real municipalities. Whether and how locali integrates them depends on concrete demand from operators — not on building a complete connector catalogue.

Civic participation. Mutual aid is one form of engagement. Another would be the structured reporting of public infrastructure problems — the broken streetlight, the blocked drain, the damaged road sign. That's not something locali does today. Whether it ever will depends on whether municipalities and operators consider this step useful and practical.

Connected hubs. Every hub is deliberately an island today. How hubs could exchange content meaningfully — without requiring a central service — is an open architectural question. Technically solvable. But only worthwhile if the demand is real, not as feature completeness for its own sake.

Feedback, ideas, and involvement

Are you running a municipality, club, or local initiative and want to evaluate locali? Get in touch. Early operators actively shape how the product develops.

Ideas and feature requests are explicitly welcome. If something is missing, a feature you'd expect isn't there, or you have a specific requirement from your context — that's exactly the kind of feedback that's valuable at this stage.

Contact: Imprint