Tane

About Tane

Tane (種, "seed"; from tanemaki 種まき, "to sow seeds") is a local-first, decentralized app for
keeping and sharing traditional seeds.

Every traditional seed is a letter written by thousands of generations, passed
from hand to hand. Tane helps people and seed-saver collectives keep a
friendly inventory of their bank, decide what they offer, and share it locally
— without a central intermediary that could control, censor, or be fined for
it.

MANAGE YOUR BANK
• Add a seed with just a photo and a name — no Latin required.
• Note the year, how much you have, where it came from, germination tests.
• Search and filter; snap a photo now and name it later.

YOURS, AND ONLY YOURS
• Your seed book works with no internet at all. What you write stays on your
phone; nothing goes out unless you put some of your seeds up for sharing, or
write to someone.
• Everything is encrypted at rest on your device.
• No account, no sign-up, no ads, no trackers.
• Save an encrypted backup and keep a printed recovery sheet — restore your
whole bank on a new device.

SHARE, THE WAY IT'S ALWAYS BEEN DONE
• Mark what you have spare to give away, swap or sell.
• Print a catalog of what you share to take to a seed fair.

SHARING NEEDS THE INTERNET
Keeping your seed book needs nothing but your phone. Sharing does need a
connection: to get an offer or a message across to someone, Tane leaves it on
community servers — machines run by people, not by a company. Tane comes with
four: relay.comunes.org, which Asociación Comunes runs (the same people who make
Tane), plus three public ones that others already use — nos.lol, relay.damus.io
and relay.primal.net.

Tane only talks to them when you choose to: first to have a look at what people
share (that sends nothing about you), then, if you write to someone or share
your seeds, after agreeing to the community rules. Before that it doesn't
connect to anything, and messaging stays switched off. When you write or share,
those servers see the key that stands for you and the address your phone
connects from — no name, no email, no account. Your seed book itself is never
sent anywhere, unless you turn on keeping your own devices up to date: then an
encrypted copy only you can read is left for your other phone or computer.

You stay in charge of that list of servers. In the sharing setup you can switch
off any server on it, switch off every one of them — Tane then goes back to
being a seed book that never connects — or add the address of a different
server. Anyone can run a server of their own, and Tane works just as well with
it.

Tane is free software (AGPL-3.0). No ads, no commissions, no business model
— it exists to support traditional varieties and push back against the seed
monopoly.