[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"$f350zfmtl9bmgx":3},{"code":4,"message":5,"data":6,"timestamp":26},10000,"success",{"full_name":7,"position":8,"description":9,"language":10,"stars":11,"forks":12,"stars_gained":13,"age_days":14,"hn_threads":15,"one_liner":16,"summary_md":17,"topic":18,"github_topics":21,"license":22,"homepage":23,"updated_at":24,"history":25},"ELY-Open-Source\u002FElyOffice",4,"Ely Office: offline-first desktop apps in Rust and GPUI","Rust",969,62,191,5,[],"An offline-first office suite and mail client for people who want a local alternative to Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.","## The problem\n\nDesktop office work now assumes an account. Word, Excel and PowerPoint want a Microsoft 365 subscription and OneDrive; Google Docs wants a browser and a Google account. If you want your documents to live in ordinary folders and never leave your machine, you are left stitching together LibreOffice, a separate PDF editor, a mail client and a Markdown viewer. Ely Office bundles that set into one install: document, spreadsheet, presentation, PDF, mail, Git, Markdown and an agent app, sharing a look and a local-first model.\n\n## What's different\n\nThe format engines are not new. ElyDoc, ElyTable and ElyShow run on LibreOfficeKit; ElyPDF uses MuPDF plus Tesseract for OCR; ElyMail has its own IMAP\u002FPOP3\u002FSMTP stack over SQLite. The difference is the integration and the UI layer: one Rust\u002FGPUI shell over these engines, no account, no cloud, and files kept in your own folders, with mail following the system proxy. A comparison: LibreOffice is the engine supplier but behaves like separate large applications with their own UI conventions; OnlyOffice offers a similar multi-app desktop suite but is built around collaboration servers; Google Workspace is the opposite trade-off, cloud-first. Here the apps are thin clients over the same engines, so compatibility should track upstream LibreOffice rather than a from-scratch implementation.\n\n## Who it's for\n\nGood fit for privacy-conscious individual users and small teams on Windows, macOS or Linux who mostly work offline and want DOCX\u002FXLSX\u002FPPTX compatibility without a Microsoft account. Also reasonable for developers who want mail, a Git client and Markdown in the same package. Look elsewhere if you need real-time co-editing, cloud sync across devices, or Microsoft 365 add-ins and macros, because the README describes no such service. Also skip it if an unproven project is a risk you cannot take.\n\n## Cost of adoption\n\nThere is a download for Windows, macOS and Linux, so end users can try packaged builds. Building from source is heavy: the scripts fetch and build a patched LibreOffice (the README says about an hour), a patched MuPDF and Git, and the Windows path involves Cygwin and MSBuild. ElyMail needs a Microsoft client ID at build time. The licence is MIT, but the bundled engines keep their own licences (see docs\u002Flicenses.md), so redistribution and branding constraints need checking. The README is detailed on building but says little about sync, extensibility or the maturity of each app.\n\n## Verdict\n\nThis is a brand-new project: five days old, yet it has already taken in about 970 stars, with a new-board rate around +191 stars per day. That is a spike, not a track record; it has not been seen on the daily trending board and has no Hacker News discussion. The design is pragmatic: reuse battle-tested engines and focus on integration, the shell and offline operation. But nine apps, including mail and an agent, in a five-day-old repository is a lot of surface area, and the first release is where bugs and format gaps will show. Worth a look if offline-first matters to you; not yet something to move your working documents onto.",{"slug":19,"name":20},"productivity","Productivity & Utilities",[],"MIT","https:\u002F\u002Foffice.elygpui.com","2026-10-25T01:06:48Z",[],1792909510]