Edris Ranjbar has released Edi Life OS, a self-hosted personal dashboard that consolidates ten distinct productivity workspaces into a single PHP and MySQL application. The project distinguishes itself by shipping an optional Node.js MCP server, allowing AI assistants like Claude to interact directly with the user's private data. This release addresses the fragmentation common in personal productivity stacks, where habit trackers, budgeting tools, and task managers rarely communicate with one another.

Architecture and Data Integration

The application is built without a frontend framework or build step, relying on vanilla JavaScript and PHP 8.1+ to ensure compatibility with cheap shared hosting environments. Ten workspaces, including Growth, Focus, Finance, and Kanban, share a single database and authentication system. The architecture emphasizes data connectivity; habits directly influence goal progress, and Kanban cards appear in the unified calendar view. This interconnectedness allows the Overview workspace to calculate a live productivity score based on daily inputs across all modules.

AI Interaction via MCP

The standout feature for developers is the integrated Model Context Protocol server, which exposes 26 distinct tools across the dashboard's domains. Users can deploy this server locally to enable natural language commands such as "Log a 450,000 Toman food expense" or "Create a SMART goal called Build a home studio." The MCP server communicates exclusively through the application's token-protected HTTP API, ensuring that AI agents never touch the underlying database or credentials directly. This separation maintains security while providing robust automation capabilities for AI-driven workflow management.

Deployment and Security Considerations

Edi Life OS supports deployment via Docker Compose or direct extraction to a web server, with specific guidance for Apache configurations. The project is designed for single-owner use, with security measures including revision checks to prevent stale tabs from overwriting data and transactional writes for API interactions. However, the documentation notes that API token scopes and application-level rate limiting are not yet implemented, requiring users to configure request limits at the hosting layer. Secrets are hidden from API reads by default, though the source clarifies that this is a visibility flag rather than separate encryption.

Key Takeaways

  • Edi Life OS unifies ten productivity tools into a single PHP/MySQL stack, eliminating the need for multiple vendor subscriptions.
  • The built-in MCP server exposes 26 tools, enabling AI assistants to read and write dashboard data via a secure HTTP API.
  • The project prioritizes simplicity with no frontend build steps, making it viable for low-cost shared hosting environments.
  • Current limitations include a lack of API token scoping and rate limiting, necessitating external security controls.

The Bottom Line

Edi Life OS is a pragmatic response to productivity tool fatigue, offering a rare combination of self-hosted simplicity and cutting-edge AI integration. By leveraging MCP, it transforms a static dashboard into an interactive agent, proving that open-source personal software can now compete with proprietary SaaS on both privacy and automation.