Sioul

Sioul [siwl] is Breton for calm, peaceful, silent.

Most software expects people to adapt to it. Sioul adapts the demands of the world to the person.

Modern admin assumes someone always available and always at full strength. Sioul starts instead from what you can give today, your attention, your energy, your health and your rest, and fits work, institutions and money around it.

A letter from the tax office, the task it asks for, the appointment, the document, the person who sent it and the payment all belong to one matter. You do not have to keep their relationships in your head: Sioul keeps them.

Sioul is a personal administrative environment. It gathers what modern life scatters across mailboxes, websites, calendars, task lists, folders and banks, and brings forward only what belongs in your attention now. It is free software, and it runs on your own devices.

It is not a productivity app. It does not try to make you do more, answer faster or keep up with everything: it tries to make admin ask less of you. It is designed as an act of care.

It is made for the people who need it most, from research, not from taste. Sioul is designed for the people for whom admin costs most, whose energy or thinking is limited or changes from day to day: neurodivergent people, autistic or with ADHD; people living with PTSD or another trauma, anxiety, depression or burnout; with ME/CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome), long COVID or another illness that limits energy or thinking; with an eating disorder; and everyone who knows admin anxiety, the dread that a letter, a form or a call from an office can bring: ADHD makes admin harder to start and to keep track of, PTSD can turn an office's demands into a reminder of harm, and the two often come together. Its design is trauma-informed: safety, predictability and choice come first, nothing surprises or blames you, and everything can be undone. Its choices are firm, and none of them is a matter of taste: each comes from published studies, cited with what they found and how strong their evidence is (what the research says).

Website and user guide: aurelienpierre.github.io/sioul

You decide what gets through

The world does not get direct access to your attention. Mail, calls, messages from other apps, the websites you keep, reminders and doses all pass through the same rules, and you set them. Each kind of time in your day has rules of its own: work, your admin, leisure, meals, sleep, and the free time or the pause you take at the press of a button.

Some things come at once: the code you just asked a website for, a dose, a call from someone you chose. Some wait for their time: a client's mail waits for your working hours, the tax office's for your admin hours, and nobody's work reaches your evening. Some are shown where you look, on the Porch or on your phone's home screen, without a notification. Some never reach you, such as the senders you blocked. Being shown is not being interrupted: only what you allowed may interrupt you.

Most software lets each app decide when it may interrupt you. Sioul turns that around: you set the rules once, and they hold for your mail, calls, messages, sites and reminders, on your computer and on your phone: what reaches you, and when.

Your devices follow your boundaries. Your computer and your phone are two ways into the same rules, carried between them sealed by your own sync app. Do-not-disturb is one switch for every device: turned on at your computer, it holds on your phone, usually within minutes, and the other way round; a pause and Free time travel the same way. On an Android phone, Sioul screens calls by the same rules: a call from someone who may not reach you now goes to your voicemail, and the Porch tells you later who called. Sioul never answers a call and never listens. When you expect one, a click on any of your devices lets every call ring for an hour.

A filter that learns what can wait. Most spam filters keep an inbox tidy; Sioul's protects your attention. It learns from your own mail, on your computer, when you ask, and only the small table it learns travels to your phone, sealed. It judges strangers' mail only, and what looks like spam, or might be, waits in a folded queue on the Porch, without a count or a notification. Until you choose what it does with each verdict, it moves nothing.

The other way round

Most software	Sioul
Your obligations fill the day; your needs fit around them.	Your needs shape the day; the work fits around them.
Every app decides when it may interrupt you.	You decide what may reach you, and when; the rest waits for its time.
Each kind of thing has its own program, and you keep the links.	Each piece is tied to the others, and Sioul keeps the links.
A missed date becomes overdue work.	The plan starts again from today. Nothing becomes a debt.

These are not four interface choices. They are the four rules from which the rest of Sioul follows. Mail, calls, the agenda, tasks, health, budgets and the phone are not separate modules side by side: they are the same four rules, each time applied to one kind of thing. They belong together because each one makes demands on the same limited attention: yours.

• Your needs first, then the work. You set your meals, your rest and your sleep first; they are kept free, and so is the time to get ready, get there and come back around each event. Each day you can say how it is (clear, haze or fog), and at its end whether it was too much, about right or too empty: the plan learns how much a day holds for you, and never guesses your state from what you do. The work goes in the hours you have given it, as one next step with its reason. Nothing is ever overdue.
• A porch between the world and your attention. Mail, the news from the "secure mailboxes" of banks and offices, chats: everything new waits on the Porch, sorted, and shown in the hours you chose. The question is not what has arrived, but what belongs in your attention now. Each message is checked first, genuine or forged, and the codes you just asked for come at once.
• The software keeps the links. Each matter you follow is a project (a tax return, a lease, a client's work): its mail comes to it by itself, and its tasks, events, notes and people are tied to it, on one line of time. You are no longer the glue between a mail program, a calendar, a task list, a folder and a bank's website.
• Nothing to be afraid of getting wrong. No unread counts, badges, red or streaks; new mail makes no sound; ten seconds to undo anything moved, deleted or sent; nothing sent, deleted or paid without you, not even by an AI agent. The words are chosen with the same care: reminders that neither call you ill nor praise you, stopping early said as the ordinary thing it is, no forced cheer, no talking down.

When capacity changes

Sioul was designed first for people for whom administration is especially costly: autistic people, people with ADHD, people dealing with anxiety, trauma, burnout, depression or exhaustion, and people whose energy or cognition fluctuates. The same needs come with long COVID, ME/CFS and other conditions that limit energy, with an eating disorder or irregular eating, with caring for someone, with a bad stretch of life. Sioul works from what a day can hold, which changes, not from a diagnosis: it needs none, and guesses nothing about your state. You say what you can do, and it plans around that.

People with a disability or a long-term health condition work for themselves more often than others, and studies link ADHD to self-employment; working for yourself brings more admin. So Sioul also carries a small business, from a client's first mail to the paid invoice.

What it does

• The Porch. New mail from every address, checked (genuine or forged), sorted into lanes, and shown in the hours you chose, with the news of the sites you keep. The codes and links you just asked a site for come at once, quietly.
• Hours set in advance: working hours and hours for your own admin; every other time is leisure; meals and sleep come from Health. Each address, site, budget and task is for one or several of them; the rest waits, out of sight. Who may reach you when is yours to set, list by list and time by time. While you sleep, nothing disturbs but what you let through, such as your doses.
• One next step. Tasks that wait for each other are ordered into the one step to take now, with its reason, placed in the hours meant for it. Starting is helped; stopping counts. The day is laid out around your meals and events, a step moved by dragging it, with two half-hours kept for you.
• What a day holds. What a task costs (thinking, feelings, anxiety, body and senses) and what it gives back can be rated, before or after. From the days you describe at their end, the plan learns how much a day holds for you, fills each day a little below it, and says in words why a day holds what it holds: never a number, a gauge or red. Closing the day takes a few taps, every answer optional, and nothing compares what was planned with what was done.
• Meals, rest, sleep and medicines. You set your meals (how many, when, how long, the time to get them ready), naps, bedtime, waking and the time to wind down; their times are kept free, with two notices at most, each once, and each can move for one day without a word asked. Nothing about food, portions or numbers is ever recorded or shown: no "missed", no praise. Each dose is reminded once, on the device you are using; a dose marked on one device is known on the others, and when Sioul cannot know, it says "check first" rather than "not taken". Sioul does not treat anything; it plans around the needs you set: health.
• Working for yourself, from the client's first mail to the paid invoice. A project per client, whose mail comes to it by itself; time counted while you work (the focus timer, with its own notification to pause or stop, or 1h30 noted after a call), also kept to learn how long things really take; what is left to bill always in view; the invoice in one click, numbered without gaps, with most of the mentions French law asks for ("EI" and the date of the service are still to come); the money expected in your budget until it is paid; a spreadsheet for your accountant. No time tracker, invoicing service or subscription beside it: working for clients.
• Everything in one window, tied together: mail, agenda, contacts, notes, projects, time and invoices, budgets and bank accounts, papers and scanned letters, medicines, and the websites you have to check (banks, offices, chats), logged in once.
• Notes that stay yours: a folder of Markdown files, fully compatible with an Obsidian vault and with Nextcloud Notes: the same folder works in all three, side by side, nothing imported or converted. Sioul ties notes to tasks, mail and events with plain Markdown links: notes.
• Yours: your data stays on your devices, in plain files and in your own accounts, and travels between your devices sealed, through a folder your own sync app carries. There is no server of ours, and the code is free: a tool meant to lift the weight of administrative machinery cannot tie you to a service you cannot leave.

Research and refusals

Each rule in Sioul comes from a chain: what studies observed, why, the rule it gives, what Sioul does, and what it refuses: what the research says, and the research notes, each study with how strong its evidence is. Sioul refuses, each time with the evidence, what other software does to people: streaks and points, "overdue" counts, repeated reminders, scores, charts and calendars of mood or energy, guessing capacity or mood from behaviour or a watch, schedules that move things without asking, an AI that sends, books or pays on its own. Not known yet: whether Sioul itself lightens admin. That is still to be measured, with the people who use it.

An act of care

Sioul is the working counterpart of a book by the same author, Design and Engineering, in Spite of Open-Source (free, in PDF and EPUB), whose conclusion is that to design is to care. It also describes what happens to the people least equipped for it: "First, everyone is conscripted to the computer, for tasks that got done fine without it; then the least equipped are technically set up to fail; then they are made to carry the blame." Everyday admin is where this happens most, and where Sioul applies the book's method. One test decides everything added to it: does it take work off the person, rather than move it somewhere else? As the book puts it, "a tool serves its user, or it betrays them".

Where it stands

Version 0.0.5: Sioul is young and changes often; it is used every day. Packages for Windows, macOS (Apple silicon and Intel), Linux (AppImage and Flatpak) and Android (64-bit phones, Android 9 and later) are on the releases page: built and tested by GitHub, used daily on Linux and on an Android phone, little tried elsewhere yet. What differs on a phone: docs/android.md.

It is made by one person, in the open: no support is promised. Questions and reports are welcome in GitHub issues.

Building

It needs Rust 1.89 or newer, a C++ compiler, the D-Bus development files, and, for the window, Qt 6.9 or newer with Qt Declarative, Qt WebEngine (with Qt WebChannel and Qt PDF), Qt Multimedia, Qt Positioning, Qt Location and Qt Image Formats. The packages for each system, and building on Windows and macOS: Install, and docs/building.md.

cargo build --release                 # sioul, the command line (no Qt needed)
cargo build --release -p sioul-app    # sioul-app, the window

To find it in the application menu:

install -Dm755 target/release/sioul-app ~/.local/bin/sioul-app
install -Dm755 target/release/sioul ~/.local/bin/sioul
install -Dm644 data/com.aurelienpierre.Sioul.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/com.aurelienpierre.Sioul.desktop
install -Dm644 data/com.aurelienpierre.Sioul.metainfo.xml ~/.local/share/metainfo/com.aurelienpierre.Sioul.metainfo.xml
mkdir -p ~/.local/share/icons && cp -r data/icons/hicolor ~/.local/share/icons/

Try it on invented mail first:

cargo run -q -- --config examples/demo.toml porch
cargo run -q -- --config examples/demo.toml card crates/sioul-core/tests/fixtures/porch/03-forged.eml
cargo run -q -- --config examples/demo.toml --language fr budgets --maildir crates/sioul-core/tests/fixtures/money

Then the first steps with your own accounts: First steps.

Documentation

• The user guide, for using Sioul: aurelienpierre.github.io/sioul.
• The design notes, for working on it, in docs/: the design, what the research says, the architecture, building, the roadmap, and a note for each part. They are also on the website, under For developers.
• The website itself is in website/: website/build.sh builds it with Zensical.

For technical readers

• Every message checked on arrival: SPF, DKIM, DMARC, ARC and reverse DNS, by Sioul itself. Forged mail is set aside with the reason; names borrowed from brands are caught, even written with look-alike letters.
• Attachments scanned before they open, by your system's antivirus: ClamAV on Linux and macOS, Microsoft Defender (through AMSI) on Windows.
• HTML mail made safe: nothing remote loads, nothing runs.
• Security keys and Bitwarden: WebAuthn and FIDO2 keys (a YubiKey) in the sites you keep; logins filled from Bitwarden, read by Sioul itself and never written.
• OpenPGP: signing and encrypting as you send, with Autocrypt and the Web Key Directory.
• Sharing between your devices, a phone included: each device keeps its own data; a folder that any sync app carries (Nextcloud, Dropbox, Syncthing, Google Drive, OneDrive…) passes changes between them, each device writing only its own file, sealed end to end (XChaCha20-Poly1305, the key made from your passphrase by Argon2id); notes and papers file by file; earlier versions kept on each device. No server of ours. How it works, and what it protects; the design: docs/database.md.
• AI agents, only if you connect one: sioul mcp serves an agent such as Claude Code what Sioul keeps on this device, through the Model Context Protocol. It never sends, deletes or pays.
• Open standards and plain files: IMAP, SMTP, CalDAV and CardDAV, tasks linked as RFC 9253 says, Maildir, TOML, and notes in Markdown, compatible with Obsidian vaults and Nextcloud Notes. What works with what, feature by feature, and how far each was tested: Works with.
• Rust, with a Qt 6 window in QML through CXX-Qt.

Licence

GPL-3.0-or-later: see LICENSE. Copyright © 2026 Aurélien Pierre.