Both draw the relationships between things, and both can put the result in front of a room. Kumu is a web platform built for mapping systems, stakeholders and networks, where free projects are public. Filamental is a desktop app that keeps the map as files on your own disk, with notes on every node, and shares only what you choose to publish.
Kumu was made for exactly the maps the social sector draws: stakeholder maps with loyalties and influence, systems and causal loop maps, social networks and community assets. There’s nothing to install, a spreadsheet can become a map, any number of collaborators can work on it, and a presentation builder turns the result into something you can walk a room through.
For a public map that a whole coalition maintains together, it’s a very good answer, and plenty of foundations and universities use it for just that.
A map on a web platform is shared by default, which is the point of it, and on Kumu’s free plan projects are public. That’s fine for a map of public things and awkward for a map of who actually holds the influence in a negotiation, a funder’s politics, or an investigation that hasn’t concluded.
A Filamental project is a folder on your own computer, so it’s private on every plan without asking. Nothing reaches our servers unless you publish a link, and a published link is encrypted on your device before it leaves, so we can’t read it either. Each node is a Markdown file with room for the reasoning behind it, and the connections carry a type you name, a direction and a strength.
The trade is collaboration. Filamental isn’t a shared web workspace, so two people working at once means a synced folder rather than one live document in a browser.
The two sit comfortably side by side. Keep the map a coalition maintains in public on Kumu, and keep the version with the notes you’d never publish, about motives, leverage and what you’re going to do next, in Filamental on your own machine.
Getting a spreadsheet in is a conversation rather than an import. Export it as a CSV, attach it to Filamental’s built-in AI and ask for the map, and you get the organisations as nodes and the relationships as typed connections, a first draft that’s yours to arrange. The AI runs on your own account or a model on your own computer, never ours.
Filamental’s Personal plan is free and permanent, with no account and no card, and every project on it is private because it lives on your computer. The paid tier is $120 a year, or $12 a month, and covers handing work over beyond the one live link that’s free, including presenting.
For some jobs. Both draw the relationships between things and both can present the result. Kumu is a web platform built for systems, stakeholder and network maps, with spreadsheet imports and many people editing in the browser. Filamental is a desktop app that keeps the map as Markdown files on your own computer, with notes on every node, and is private on every plan. A public map with a lot of collaborators suits Kumu, and a confidential one you are still working out suits Filamental.
Yes. A Filamental project is a folder on your own computer, so it is private by default on every plan, including the free one, and nothing reaches our servers unless you publish a share link. A published link is encrypted on your device before it leaves, so we cannot read it, and one live link at a time is free.
Not directly, since Filamental has no spreadsheet import. Export the sheet as a CSV, attach it to a message in Filamental's built-in AI window and ask it to build the map, with the people or organisations as nodes and the relationships as typed connections. An AI connected over MCP, such as Claude Code, can do the same from a file on your disk.
Not live, in the way a shared web workspace allows. A Filamental project is a folder of files, so a team shares it through a synced or shared folder, and each person sees the others' changes as the files update. If many people need to edit one map at once in a browser, a web platform such as Kumu is the better fit.
Filamental's Personal plan is free and permanent, with no account and no card, and every project on it is private because it lives on your own computer. The paid tier, at $120 a year or $12 a month, covers handing work over beyond the one live link that's free, such as more links, updating a link already sent, the HTML download and presenting. Kumu publishes its own prices on its pricing page.
Write down why each one matters on the node itself, then press Dark Energy and see who’s actually in the middle.