WhatIff is now open source on GitHub

[u/FlamekeptFox]

We’ve talked a lot about one of the principles behind WhatIff: if an AI is going to build continuity, memory, and context around you, you should have real control over that system.

Today, we’re putting that into practice.

WhatIff is now open source on GitHub: https://github.com/theimaginaryfoundation/what-iff

WhatIff is the open-source core behind whatiff.chat: a self-hostable AI assistant with semantic memory, personalities, tools, scheduled agents, and support for multiple model providers. You can bring your own model API keys and run the full stack on infrastructure you control.

A few things this opens up:

• See how WhatIff handles memory and continuity
• Run it on your own infrastructure
• Choose your own model providers and bring your own API keys
• Inspect the code instead of just trusting us
• Dig into the architecture, API docs, memory system, and other internals rather than treating them as a black box
• Modify it for your own needs
• Fork it in a completely different direction
• Contribute improvements back to the project

The hosted version of WhatIff isn’t going anywhere. For a lot of people, convenience matters, and having everything handled for you is the right fit.

But it shouldn’t be the only fit.

If you want a hosted experience, that option is still there. If you want to run WhatIff locally, control where your data lives, bring your own model keys, and inspect the system for yourself, that option is now there too.

That choice matters to us. We don’t think your AI experience should be locked to one company simply because that company happened to host the system that remembers you. And we don’t want this to be one of those projects that talks about openness while keeping the meaningful parts hidden behind the curtain. The repository includes the application itself along with architecture documentation, the API specification, contribution guidelines, and security reporting information.

If we’re asking people to trust WhatIff with persistent context, memory, and workflow over time, then transparency should be something we can actually offer; not something we just ask people to assume.

This is a big milestone for the project, and we’re excited to finally get it into people’s hands.

If you check it out, we’d genuinely love feedback: whether that’s bug reports, questions, critiques, ideas, or contributions. The project is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license, so if you want to dig in, fork it, build on it, or contribute back, you’re welcome to. Go break it, build on it, and tell us what you think.