About the Developer

Hi! I’m Connor. I’m the person building BonsAI, and I’m based in the United States. You can learn more about my background on my personal website.

BonsAI started as a personal project, but it exists because I kept running into the same pattern over and over: modern AI tools ask users to make tradeoffs that many people aren’t comfortable with.

Most cloud AI products are built around recurring revenue. That business model creates incentives I don’t love: collecting as much data as possible, keeping users locked in, and quietly trading privacy for convenience. Even when intentions are good, the pressure to grow often pushes products in directions users never asked for.

I also worry about the environmental cost of always-on cloud infrastructure. Training and running massive models in data centers isn’t free (financially or environmentally) and those costs are usually invisible to the people using the tools.

BonsAI is my attempt at a different approach.

It runs locally. It stores your data on your machine. It works offline. When it uses the internet, it does so only when you explicitly ask. There are no accounts, no analytics, and no background data collection.

I’m not funded by advertisers, investors, or data brokers. BonsAI isn’t designed to extract value from you. Rather, it’s designed to be useful, understandable, and owned by the person using it.

I don’t believe software needs to be complicated or intrusive to be powerful. I believe in small, carefully built tools with clear boundaries. If BonsAI ever changes direction, I believe users deserve to know.

Best,
Connor