A library that still works when the internet does not.
Kuwala is a box you walk up to and ask. It holds twenty reference libraries on its own disk, runs a small AI on solar power, and needs no signal, no account and no phone.
Ask in your own words. It searches the shelf, reads you the answer, and names the article it came from, so you can always see where it got that. If someone gives it a connection it can use the internet too, and it says so every single time.
What it is, and how it works
Kuwala is a physical station: a screen, a camera, two sockets and a battery, with a folding solar panel beside it. There is nothing to install and nobody to sign up with. You walk up to it and start typing. It behaves exactly the same whether or not there is a signal for miles around.
No search box syntax, no keywords, no menus to work down. Ask the way you would ask a person, in a whole sentence, and it works out what you meant. The model runs on the box itself, so the answer comes back in seconds and nothing you type ever leaves the room.
Plain wordsThe shelf is written in English, but you do not have to be. Ask in the language spoken around the box and it translates both ways, on the box, with no connection involved. Machine translation is imperfect and it says so on any answer it has translated. Safety wording is the exception: that is written by people, checked by people, and never passed through the translator.
Translated on the boxTwo general encyclopaedias, eight health references, four practical shelves and six for school and skills. Roughly sixty gigabytes of reading, stored locally and searched locally. The whole list, with article counts and sizes, is further down this page.
Local libraryThis is the part that matters. The box does not answer from memory. It searches the archives first, pulls the passages that actually cover your question, and writes the answer out of those, then tells you which article it used. When the shelf genuinely has nothing, it says so instead of inventing something that sounds right.
GroundedEvery answer carries a label. Local library means it came off the disk. Internet means the box was connected and went and fetched it just now. The two are never quietly blended, and the connection stays off until somebody deliberately turns it on.
Labelled every timeHold a sick leaf up to the camera and it tells you what is wrong, wilt or mosaic or a hungry plant, then reads the treatment out of the growing shelf. The same works for a radio that will not turn on or a pump that will not prime. It always shows you the page it took the answer from.
Crops and repairsBurns, bleeding, snakebite, fever. It searches two medical encyclopaedias alongside the emergency notes and the medicines reference, and reads you what they say with the article named. It will not tell you what illness you have. For that it points you to a person, every time, without exception.
Local libraryBy default the box knows nothing about you. Ask anonymously and nothing is written to the disk or to a log. No account, no history, no company behind it holding your questions, so there is nothing to leak and nothing to hand over, and the next person who walks up finds an empty screen. If you would rather it remembered, you can keep a profile on the box and it will hold on to what you asked before, so you can carry on where you left off instead of starting again. Either way it stays on the box. Nothing is sent away, and you can wipe a profile whenever you want.
Anonymous by defaultThe shelf
All of it on the disk, searchable the moment the box is switched on.
The general spine. Start here and the box narrows down from there.
The easy-read encyclopaedia. Short words, short pages. Good for a first answer.
The full encyclopaedia, text only. We do not take the picture edition at 100 GB and up; it would fill the disk.
Read out with the article named, every time. It will not tell you what illness you have.
A medicine-first encyclopaedia. Illness, treatment, anatomy. First-aid reading, not a doctor.
Wikipedia's medicine set packaged as its own library. Overlaps MDWiki. Search both when you want a health question searched hard, or turn one off when you want less noise.
US National Library of Medicine patient pages. Plain-language health.
Emergency-medicine notes. Short, clinical, for what to do right now.
What a medicine is for, and the usual warnings.
Vaccines, outbreaks, travel diseases.
Teaching texts, not a first-aid card.
From the Kiwix medical bundle. Treatment, wells, hygiene.
The shelves that answer a question you are standing in front of.
Appropriate technology. Compost, water, solar, building, village how-to. Not a general encyclopaedia.
Tear-down and repair manuals. Phones, radios, tools, household kit.
A local map extract. Roads, clinics, villages. Not the whole planet.
Local health and agriculture pages, packaged for the box.
For the people who come back a second time.
Khan Academy with exercises. A separate app rather than an archive, installed alongside.
Science and maths simulations.
Open textbooks.
Learn to code, offline.
Talks, including the medical sets.
Public-domain books.
Stack Overflow is skipped. At 107 GB it would take the disk on its own.
Plug in
A 15 amp branch on its own switch and fuse. A fan, a lamp, a radio, a small pump.
USB-A and USB-C on their own 5 amp branch. Phones, tablets, a torch, a battery bank.
Hang the box off Starlink and switch it on, and it hands out a signal to the yard around it. Off by default, like every other way out.
Every branch is fused and switched on its own, so a busy socket cannot take the power out from under the box.
How it runs
200 watts of panel into an MPPT controller. No grid, no generator, no bill.
12.8 volts, 50 amp-hours, on a shunt you can read. Enough to carry the night and a grey morning.
A small, quick model sits awake all day so the screen answers the moment somebody arrives.
A harder question wakes the bigger model. It drinks more watts, so it only runs when it is earned.