Most e-signature products work by uploading your document to a server, where a key the vendor controls applies a signature on your behalf. It's convenient. It also means the thing that represents you, your signing key, lives on someone else's computer.
Inksign starts from the opposite premise: your key never leaves your machine.
What "local-first" actually buys you
When signing happens on your device, a few things become true that can't be true in the uploaded-to-the-cloud model:
- There's nothing to breach. A server that never holds your key can't leak it.
- There's no one to trust with your documents. The bytes of your contract never travel anywhere.
- You choose where the key lives: an encrypted file, your computer's TPM, or a hardware token you carry.
Honesty about what a signature is
Local-first also forces a kind of honesty. Inksign won't claim your signature is "legally qualified" in a jurisdiction it can't back; that depends on the certificate you sign with, not on marketing. What it will do is produce a real, standards-based PAdES signature that anyone can verify, and tell you plainly whether a mark is a cryptographic seal or just visible ink.
That's the whole idea: a tool that does exactly what it says, on hardware you control.