Roono is a native macOS writing IDE designed for investigative journalists, novelists, and essayists. It unites evidence pinning, immutable revision history, encrypted source storage, and bring-your-own AI assistance into a warm, quiet, and sovereign desktop application.
The Trusted Draft
Modern longform writing demands more than distraction-free typography. When reporting on delicate investigations, drafting complex manuscripts, or assembling sensitive research, writers require proof that holds up under scrutiny.
Roono is built around the promise of the trusted draft: one quiet place to write, source, revise, and publish work that has to hold up. The writer remains the sole authority; nothing silently edits the manuscript.
Core Invariants
Roono enforces five structural invariants that cannot be bypassed by any feature, agent, or update:
- Append-Only History
- Moments are immutable content-addressed snapshots. No code path physically deletes history or rewrites prose history.
- Structural Vault Absence
- Sensitive sources in the Encrypted Vault are physically excluded from AI agent workspaces, Spotlight indexing, and cloud sync.
- Agents Never Overwrite
- Bring-your-own AI agents can only propose edits on separate branch tracks. An agent never modifies draft prose directly.
- The Fact-Check Gate
- Publishing is physically blocked while unresolved claim pins or unverified citations remain in the manuscript.
First Run Setup
When you launch Roono for the first time, you are presented with the Library screen. Click 'New Project' or press ⌘N to create your first manuscript.
You will be prompted to set an optional session word goal (e.g. 1,000 words) and choose whether to initialize an Encrypted Vault for confidential sources. New Project is ⌘⇧N.
Local Storage & Privacy
Projects live in local Application Support on your Mac. Roono does not require an account, does not phone home with manuscript text, and does not put the live library inside a cloud-sync folder.
A portable .roono archive is the complete non-Vault handoff. An optional plaintext Markdown mirror can write to a folder you choose, including Dropbox or iCloud Drive. That mirror is output-only, excludes the Vault, and refuses to overwrite a file that changed outside Roono.