Straight answers.

Yes, and that is the whole design rule: no feature is allowed to need a network. The core library ships inside the app. Search runs on the phone. Maps are downloaded vector tiles. The compass, position and sun-and-moon tools use the phone's own sensors and satellites, which work without cell service. The family map runs over pocket radios and the Node. The only things that ever touch the internet are buying the membership and downloading updates, and updates can also come from a drive or another member's phone.

iPhone and Android, with a native app for each. There is also a portable version that runs from a USB drive on any Mac, Windows or Linux laptop, and a plain reader that needs no install at all for the day you have someone else's computer and nothing else.

No. Alphatac is a reference library for informational and educational use. It is not medical, legal or professional advice, and nothing in it should be acted on without consulting a qualified professional where one is available. What it does is show you, on every page, exactly which authoritative source the guidance came from, the date of that source, the checks we ran, and who reviewed it, so you can judge it yourself. The consequential pages, trauma, dosing, water, food safety, electrical and fuel, come only from current US government works like the Committee on Tactical Combat Casualty Care guidelines, Army manuals, CDC, NIH, FDA, USDA and FEMA.

No. The library, NOW, Nav, the plan, Learn, the tools and offline maps all work on the phone alone. Radios and the Node are what make the family map work with no tower, and the Family Kit is the zero-configuration way to get them.

A small box you plug in at home. It broadcasts its own Wi-Fi, serves the whole library to every phone on it with nothing to install, runs the family map, holds messages for anyone out of range, and works as a TAK server for anyone in the family who runs ATAK. It has its own radio, so it is a full node on your family's mesh.

No, and it doesn't try to be. ATAK is a tactical map for operators. Alphatac is the library, the plan and the server, with a family map built for people who have never heard of ATAK. If someone in your group does run ATAK, they connect to the Node like any TAK server and see the same people on their own map. Alphatac never asks you to learn a tactical console.

Every message is sealed and signed on your phone before a radio ever sees it, using a design built from audited cryptographic components and published for anyone to inspect. Members join a family in person by scanning a code, so nobody outside your group can read or forge a message. Radio transmissions themselves can be detected by anyone listening, which is true of every radio ever made, and the library teaches transmit discipline for people who care about that.

The library is a file you own, in an open, documented format that a plain reader can open without our app. Every pack you download stays readable on your device if you cancel. We do not phone home, we keep no reading history, and we do not need to exist for your copy to keep working.

Time-proven content, meaning building, blacksmithing, farming, husbandry, tanning, soap, cement and the whole rebuilding pillar, draws on the historical record because it does not expire. Medicine and food safety are the opposite: old advice there is superseded and sometimes dangerous, so those pillars are locked to current sources. The rule is by domain and it is enforced in the build, not left to judgment.

Alphatac.app is a small team building with the tactical and readiness community as its first members and reviewers. Reach us at hello@alphatac.app.

Alphatac is in early access. Founding memberships open to the early-access list first, and the first run of Family Kits goes to that list. Join it below and you will hear from us before anyone else, once, when it's your turn.