narrafirma.com

What it is

NarraFirma is a web application designed to support Participatory Narrative Inquiry (PNI). Its purpose is not to serve as a general-purpose survey tool or project management platform, but to help communities, organizations, and researchers run projects around real-life experience stories: planning questions, collecting stories, jointly interpreting data, and preserving project records. Its creator, Cynthia Kurtz, has long worked in organizational narrative research and consulting, and the software is closely tied to the methodology in her book Working with Stories.

Core capabilities

Based on the main content, NarraFirma is best understood as a “PNI project workbench.” It provides checklist-style project guidance, questions and suggestions, decision-making activities, and just-in-time prompts. It also includes a project journal to help document the process and capture reflections. For story collection, users can design question forms and collect stories online or offline, with collection and analysis handled within the same system to reduce importing and exporting. The analysis workflow supports exploring patterns in stories and their associated question responses, and generating annotated visualizations for shared interpretation of complex issues. A single installation can also support multiple projects, forms, datasets, and reports.

Pricing and deployment

NarraFirma is explicitly free and open-source software under the GPL license. It is available via GitHub, can be installed as a WordPress plugin, or deployed as a Node.js web application. It can be hosted on a web server or installed on a local computer for offline use. The website also offers the PNI Practicum online course, support, training, and consulting, but does not disclose commercial pricing.

Pros and cons

Its strengths are its deep focus on a vertical use case, complete methodology, free and open-source model, flexible deployment options, and support for real-time team collaboration without repeatedly passing files between members. It is well suited to complex, nonlinear story-based projects in the real world.

The limitations are also clear: its value depends heavily on understanding the PNI methodology, so the learning curve is steeper than with ordinary research tools. The website does not disclose enterprise-grade permissions, security and compliance features, APIs, third-party integrations, or SLA details. If an organization needs a mature SaaS admin console, audit capabilities, and identity integration, there is not enough information provided.

Who it is for and access from China

NarraFirma is suitable for narrative research teams working in community governance, organizational development, post-merger cultural integration, employee experience research, nonprofit initiatives, and government projects. If the goal is simply standardized questionnaire statistics, a more general survey or qualitative analysis tool may be a better fit. The source content does not make it possible to assess access from mainland China; it is recommended to test connectivity to the official website, GitHub, and the intended deployment environment directly.