Small team,
big vision.

National Machine is an independent software workshop. No investors, no growth team, no billion dollar goal. We're just a couple people who are tired of good tools becoming mandatory subscriptions, and subscriptions that start to look like surveillance.

The apps here share a spine. They are native macOS apps, because software should look and feel congruous with the machine you use. They are local-first, because your email and your data are yours: everything works on your Mac alone, and a cloud enters the picture only when you invite it, and only for the things a cloud is genuinely good at, like keeping a whole photo studio's catalog in sync. They are keyboard-first, because your hands know the shortest, quickest cuts. Each has an opt-in MCP server for BYO-AI agent, but it's disabled by default.

Everything is designed, built, tested, and served in-house. When you download an app it comes signed and notarized. If it crashes (betas do be like that sometimes), the report goes to a crash tracker we host. There is no third party in the middle, no AI agent learning from our mistakes.

Why the birds?

A vireo is a small, tidy songbird with an outsized voice. A shrike is a songbird that hunts and pins its catches where it can find them again. Small, sharp, a little quirky, just like us. More birds hatch when a problem annoys us badly enough.

The fine print

Apps are free during their betas. Vireo is GPLv3. Both ship early and often, with user feedback highly prioritized. Send us your thoughts. If something breaks, tell us — the people reading bug reports are the same ones who wrote this message.