A name will not make software good. What it can do is set a promise you can hold the product to.

Virlow is made of two halves, and each half is a promise. Here is what they stand for, and how the product tries to live up to them.

Vir, for virtual

The first half comes from virtual: a digital workspace that is yours.

Not a document that lives in someone else's account, and not a chat history you scroll back through hoping to find the thing you said in March. A place you set up the way you think. In Virlow that means workspaces with their own colors, notes that link to each other, properties you define, and a Home screen arranged the way you want it. The workspace tour shows what that looks like.

Virtual does not mean vague. The workspace is real in every way that matters to your work: it is where your decisions, plans and half-finished thoughts live, and it is there on the web today and, soon, on iPhone and iPad.

It also means the space is private by default. Which brings us to the second half.

Low, for flow

The second half does two jobs. The first is flow.

Flow is the state where the work carries you along: you are writing, linking, planning, and the tool is not in the way. A notes app earns its place by protecting that. Jot a thought into the line at the top of Home and it is saved as a note while you carry on. Tick a task on a workspace dashboard and it is ticked in the note it came from. Drag a note onto a calendar day to give it a date.

Flow is also about not repeating yourself. With Memories, part of Virlow Pro, assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT save what they learn about you and your work as encrypted notes in your vault, so the next conversation starts from what they already know. You can read, edit or delete every one of them. Your context stays in one workspace instead of being scattered across chat histories.

Low, for a low profile

The other job of low is privacy. Your notes should keep a low profile, even from us.

Virlow syncs your notes through our servers, so they are there on every device you use. Before anything is sent, your private note titles, contents and files are encrypted on your device with AES-256-GCM. The key that unlocks them comes from your master password, and in ordinary use that password stays on your device. So when your notes reach us, we hold ciphertext, not your words. In ordinary encrypted syncing, Virlow cannot read your notes.

A low profile is not the same as no profile, and we would rather you heard the details from us:

  • Workspace names and note tags are stored in readable form, so the app can organize your workspace. So is account information such as your email address, and operational metadata such as timestamps and file sizes.
  • Two optional features work differently. The hosted AI connector, which is off by default, decrypts your notes on Virlow's server while you have a session unlocked, so AI apps on the web can use them. Running code sends that code to our execution service unencrypted.
  • Because your master password never reaches us in ordinary use, we cannot reset it or recover your notes if you lose it.

The security page explains each of these, including the limits that apply to every browser-based encrypted product. The privacy policy lists what we collect and why. If you plan to connect an AI assistant, this explainer covers what changes when you do.

Both halves together

Put the halves back together and you get the product we are trying to build: a workspace that is yours, that keeps you in the flow of your work, and that keeps a low profile while it does.

That is the standard we hold ourselves to. If you ever find a place where Virlow falls short of its own name, tell us at team@virlow.com.

Virlow is made by Bata Labs LLC. You can start with a free workspace and see for yourself.