Some content cannot
be uploaded.
Unpublished drafts. Client work under NDA. Regulated material your legal function will not approve for a hosted tool. IndexNow runs the same measurement engine as IndexHalo, entirely on your own Mac — no account, no telemetry, nothing transmitted.
The claim, and why it is checkable
Every GEO tool in this category is hosted, which means analysing a draft requires uploading it. For a lot of professional work that is the end of the conversation — the draft is embargoed, the client's contract forbids it, or the material is regulated. IndexNow exists for that case.
It is not a trimmed-down companion app. The measurement modules are byte-identical with the hosted platform: the same signal scoring, the same RAG chunk simulation, the same consensus and entity engines, and the full Citation Studio with all fourteen block types. A score computed on your Mac and a score computed on the server cannot disagree, because it is the same code.
The privacy claim is verifiable rather than asserted. Your data lives in ~/Library/Application Support/IndexNow as readable JSON you can open, back up, or delete. With no provider API keys configured, the app places no outbound requests at all — and it shows you that state rather than asking you to trust it.
What it does
- Citation Studio — compose citation-ready pages block by block, scored live, exported as HTML and JSON-LD.
- Content Lab — RAG chunk simulation, retrieval drift, consensus divergence and edge-SEO patches against a live page or a draft that has never been published.
- Answer-engine measurement — brand profiles, prompt sets, and sweeps across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity with your own API keys, or manual observation at zero cost.
- Metrics that admit uncertainty — presence, share of voice, sentiment and citation share, every rate with its sample size and 95% confidence interval.
- Hallucination detection — answers contradicting your FactBase are flagged with the claim, the fact it contradicts, and the archived record.
- The full intelligence panel — persona stress tests, defensive probes, citation poaching and parentage, cross-language drift, and the fair-use audit.
Which edition should you use?
| IndexNow for Mac | IndexHalo hosted | |
|---|---|---|
| Account required | No | Yes |
| Content leaves your machine | Never, unless you run live engine calls | Yes — analysis runs on the server |
| Measurement engine | Identical | Identical |
| Citation Studio | Unlimited pages, stored locally | 5 / 50 / unlimited by plan |
| Scheduled monitoring | Only while the app is running | Runs continuously |
| Team access and white-label exports | No | Agency and Enterprise |
| Price | Free | From €79/month |
They are complements rather than alternatives. A common pattern is drafting and checking in IndexNow, then publishing and monitoring with the hosted platform — or running client work locally and delivering the report from the workspace.
Getting it
IndexNow needs Node.js 20 or newer. Clone the repository, run npm start to serve it at 127.0.0.1:4173, or run ./make-app.sh to build a double-clickable IndexNow.app you can move to Applications. Nothing else is installed and there is no background service.
Adding provider keys is optional. Copy .env.example to .env and set whichever of OPENAI_API_KEY, ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, GEMINI_API_KEY or PERPLEXITY_API_KEY you have. Engines without a key are skipped and the app tells you which are configured.
Questions
Does IndexNow need an IndexHalo account?+
No. There is no account, no sign-in and no licence check. The app runs a local server on your own machine and opens it in your browser. It never contacts IndexHalo.
What actually leaves my Mac?+
Nothing, unless you add provider API keys and run a live engine sweep — in which case the prompt goes to that provider, exactly as it would if you typed it into their app. With no keys, manual observation still produces real measured results and places no outbound calls at all.
Where is my data stored?+
In ~/Library/Application Support/IndexNow as readable JSON. You can open it, back it up, or delete the folder and every trace is gone. Runs are immutable once written: re-analysis creates new records rather than editing history.
Is it the same engine as the hosted product?+
Yes. The measurement modules are byte-identical between the two codebases, including Citation Studio, so a score computed locally and one computed on the hosted platform cannot disagree.
What does it cost?+
IndexNow is free. It exists because some content cannot be uploaded to a hosted service — unpublished drafts, client work under NDA, regulated material — and that is a real constraint rather than a pricing tier.
What is not in the desktop edition?+
Anything that is inherently hosted: scheduled monitoring that runs while your Mac is asleep, the shared team workspace, Stripe billing, and white-label exports tied to an Agency plan. Everything measurement-related is there.