About Letworks

We got tired of renting our own stuff.

Letworks is a small studio building software that treats you like the owner of your media, because you are.

Where this started

One day we logged into an audiobook app we hadn't opened in a while, and half the library was gone.

Not our fault. Not a bug we could fix. A licensing dispute somewhere far above our heads meant the audiobooks we had paid for, with money, believing they were ours, simply weren't there anymore. Around the same time, the same company quietly pulled the ability to download ebooks we owned onto certain devices. Files we'd purchased, now readable only where and how someone else allowed.

That's the moment the pattern snapped into focus. So much of modern software has stopped being something you own and started being something you're permitted to borrow, on terms that can change without warning and never in your favor. You don't buy anymore. You rent, and you don't hold the keys.

We built Leaflet first: a reader for the books already on our own device, that nobody could reach in and delete. Then Wavelet, for the same reason, aimed at podcasts and audiobooks. Then Hamlet, to hold a whole library on hardware we control. By the third one it wasn't a string of side projects anymore. It was a studio with a point of view. We called it Letworks. Triplet followed, for the music.

The industry decided you'll own nothing. We're building for the people who never agreed to that.

What we stand for

Software should work for you, not the other way around.

Somewhere along the way, a lot of apps stopped being tools and became storefronts with a login. They watch what you do, sell what they learn, bury the thing you came for under a feed of things you didn't, and rent you access to media you already bought. The industry has a polite word for this slow decline. We just call it hostile.

Letworks is the refuge from that. Our apps run offline or on your own hardware. They don't have accounts to harvest, feeds to manipulate, or trackers riding along in all but name. They do one job each and get out of your way. If you stop using one, your files leave with you in standard formats.

It's a bet that plenty of people are quietly done with the current deal and want an alternative that's honest about the trade.

Lines we won't cross

Some things aren't on the table. Ever.

We treat these as rules the software has to follow. A few of these are easy to keep because we designed the software so they'd be impossible to break.

We'll never sell your data.Partly on principle, partly because there's nothing to sell. We don't install the trackers that would collect it in the first place.
We'll never hold your library hostage.No subscription wall that locks your own files when you stop paying. What you add is yours to keep, and yours to take with you.
We'll never spy on you to sell ads.No behavioral profiles or targeting, and no surveillance dressed up as personalization.
We'll never quietly take back what you paid for.The thing that started all this doesn't get to happen inside our apps.

What each app does and doesn't collect is spelled out in the Trust Center.

How we keep the lights on

A business, on principle.

Letworks is a business, because software built on ownership and freedom has to pay its own way to last. Hobbies burn out. But "business" is exactly where most apps turn on their users, so here's the honest plan, up front.

Costs a few dollars

Pay a little, once.

A single small one-time purchase unlocks an app's full features. There's no subscription, and nothing renews.

Costs one short ad

Watch one ad, once.

Rather not pay? Watch a single short ad to unlock the same features. It's untargeted and unspecific, served to no profile, because we don't build one.

Either way, you get the whole app, and either way your privacy stays intact. Pay with a few dollars or one short ad, whichever you'd rather. What you never pay with is your data.

Who we stand with

We're not the only ones saying this.

There's a growing pushback against the "you'll own nothing" future, and we're firmly part of it. These are the movements and ideas we build in the spirit of. The ones with an arrow link to where you can read more:

Digital ownership, anti-DRM Right to Repair Stop Killing Games Open source Self-hosting freedom Privacy, anti-surveillance Anti-enshittification

Who's behind it

One person, nights and weekends.

Letworks is one self-taught developer right now, building this on nights and weekends, working toward a more sustainable way for software to exist. "We" is a hope as much as a description. The plan is to grow, carefully, without ever growing into the thing we set out to replace.

No name on the door yet. The work can speak first.

Letworks