Build your own little internet
Tonk is the copilot-friendly toolchain that gives independent developers freedom to build powerful shared software.
Who is this for?
AI makes it easy for anyone to build bespoke tools for small groups - households, communities, teams, friends.
But making these tools multiplayer is still hard. Server-database setups are clunky, expensive and devolve into platforms that lock you in and degrade over time.
Tonk is a toolchain for shared, just-in-time applications - copilot-friendly, local-first and multiplayer.
How does it work?
Building with Tonk feels like magic because it's copilot-friendly, local-first and multiplayer.
Apps generated with the Tonk CLI come pre-bundled with React, Typescript, Tailwind and aggressively prompt your copilot to ensure smooth vibe-coding.
The Tonk Store manages state with an optimised sync engine. The Tonk Hub is a desktop app for managing the whole stack.
Try it yourself with our guide.
*under construction
What can I build?
Tonk is perfect for building just-in-time apps over a shared, evolving data store. You can think of these interoperable networks as little internets for your household, colleagues, friends & communities:
A fluctuating set of todos for your colleagues to track progress on ephemeral projects without forcing everyone to use the same productivity app.
An evolving dataset for your friends to add locations, routes, reviews, planned trips - and surface whatever you like in custom maps apps.
An ad-free, private chatboard for your friends, but where everyone customises their experience with pluggable components such as games, calendars and notifications.
A dataset for your family to make health data available to bespoke meditation, exercise or sleep apps.
Aggregated financial information for your household to track your finances and make intelligent investments.
An AI that can assist you with full context from your chat apps, calendars, todo boards and social feeds.
Each app reads and writes to a living, multiplayer environment. Together they form your own little internet.
Why is it different?
The ideas behind Tonk are similar to:
- Urbit, but more multiplayer and navigable;
- AT Protocol / Bluesky, but keeps data private to you and your communities;
- Ethereum, but faster, more private, and less crypto-oriented than a blockchain;
- Supabase, but more lightweight and multiplayer-friendly than a traditional database.
What's next?
The Tonk team is focussed on building a delightful product for our target audience. In taking Tonk to market, we are also betting that it is the starting point for a new and better internet. The dream is that any application can read state from any other, if users permit. This will shift control from platforms to users, making the web feel less scary, less extractive and more fun.
We are working to add:
- Deployment functionality,
- Distributed authentication,
- An integration builder & library of integrations to seamlessly pull in outside data.
Over time as AI improves we expect Tonk to become available for noncoders. Freedom should scale.
Who's building this?
Tonk Labs is a London-based startup. Find out more, or book a call with the CEO.