Lockin MCP vs Weave

Lockin MCP and Weave are both personal assistants tracked by AIDiveForge. Below is a side-by-side comparison of pricing, capabilities, platforms, and ownership — sourced from each tool's live website and verified before publishing.

Lockin MCP

The tool runs a background daemon that exposes a small set of callable functions: block a site, start a timed focus session, grant a temporary unblock that expires automatically, and check what's currently blocked. Your AI assistant — Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini — calls those functions when you ask in plain language. Blocks survive restarts and new browser tabs because they sit at the OS level, not inside any single application. The single-command installer wires up the MCP server and license verification in one step. The surface area is deliberately small — this does one thing, not a dashboard full of analytics.

Weave

Weave watches your screen via OCR, pulls Gmail and Calendar data, and stores all of it locally in SQLite — so the context it works from is yours and stays on your machine. The morning brief surfaces to-dos, overdue commitments, and response debt before your day starts. When you need action rather than summary, a browser agent plans and executes steps toward a goal, and a separate macOS agent drives native apps by voice or intent. The ceiling appears early: this is a solo developer project at 72 commits with no hosted fallback, no API, and no documented path for teams or shared memory.

Attribute	Lockin MCP	Weave
Pricing	Paid	Free
Price	$19.99 once	—
Free trial	No	No
Open source	Yes	Yes
Has API	No	No
Self-hosted option	Yes	Yes
Platforms	macOS, Linux, Windows	macOS
Pros	Hosts-file-level blocking means the block holds across every browser and application on the machine, so opening an incognito window or a secondary browser does not bypass it. Four tightly scoped MCP functions — block, temp-unblock, focus session, status — integrate directly into Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, so you manage focus from inside the same chat window you already work in rather than switching to a separate app. Temporary unblocks carry an automatic expiry timer managed by the daemon, which means you do not have to remember to re-enable blocks after a brief check — they expire on schedule. The daemon restarts with the machine and re-activates all active blocks and timers, so a reboot does not silently disable your focus setup. A single npx install command handles license verification and MCP server wiring, which means setup does not require manual editing of config files or separate server configuration.	All captured data — screen OCR, email, calendar, contacts — is stored locally in SQLite, so you are not trading your personal context for a vendor's data pipeline. The browser agent accepts a goal and executes the steps to reach it without per-step instruction, so repetitive research or form-filling tasks run without you staying on the loop. Commitment and response-debt tracking surfaces what you said you would do and have not done yet, which means the morning brief catches the dropped thread before the other person follows up. Native macOS app control by voice or stated goal means automation extends beyond the browser to the full desktop environment, so you are not limited to web-only task execution. Fully free with no paid-only features and self-hosted by design, so there is no pricing gate on any capability and no subscription to cancel when the project goes dormant.
Cons	Blocks are local to one machine: if you work across a desktop and a laptop, you must install and configure separately on each device, and there is no sync layer — teams that need consistent rules across a fleet will hit this wall on day one and move to a network-level or MDM-based solution. The tool exposes no usage analytics, session history, or accountability reporting — if your workflow requires reviewing how many focus sessions ran or whether a block was bypassed, LockIn MCP produces none of that data, and you are maintaining a separate log manually. The MCP functions are callable by your AI assistant but only when you initiate the conversation — the tool does not run autonomous scheduled sessions or react to calendar events on its own, so users expecting automated focus enforcement without manual prompting will need to wire that trigger themselves or switch to a tool with native scheduling.	The setup requires cloning the repo and running npm dev commands — there is no packaged installer documented beyond electron-builder config. The first OS update that breaks an Electron or native dependency lands on you to debug, with no issue history and no maintainer response SLA. There is no API surface. Any workflow that needs Weave's memory or agents accessible from another tool, script, or service hits a dead end — teams who need that integration path switch to a self-hosted open-source alternative like Mem0 or a custom LangChain memory layer. The macOS agent and browser agent have no documented multi-user or profile separation. A household or small team that wants shared context or separate memory spaces finds no path forward in the current architecture — this is a single-user, single-machine design.

Bottom line

Lockin MCP is paid while Weave is free. Choose based on which difference matters most for your workflow.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Lockin MCP and Weave?

Lockin MCP is Paid and open source, while Weave is Free and open source. Compare pricing, free trial, API, platforms, and pros/cons in the table above on AIDiveForge.

Is Lockin MCP better than Weave?

It depends on your workflow. Use the side-by-side attributes (pricing, open source, API, self-hosted, platforms) to decide. AIDiveForge does not rank a universal winner — we publish verified facts so you can choose.