OpenKnowledge

OpenKnowledge is a self-hosted, WYSIWYG markdown editor built by the team behind Inkeep for turning plain folders of Markdown and MDX files into a full knowledge base, LLM wiki, or second brain. It ships as a native desktop app for macOS, Windows, and Linux, or as a local web app you run with a single ok init && ok start command against any existing folder, including current codebases, documentation sites, and Obsidian vaults, without needing to migrate content into a proprietary format.

What sets it apart is a real-time collaboration layer built on Hocuspocus and Yjs CRDTs that treats AI coding agents as first-class co-editors rather than one-shot patch generators. Through the Agent Client Protocol (ACP) and Model Context Protocol (MCP), agents like Claude Code, Codex, and OpenCode can open a live editing session inside the same document a human has open, with presence indicators, cursor broadcasting, and conflict-free merges handled by the same CRDT engine that powers multiplayer editing between humans.

Under the hood, OpenKnowledge is a pnpm/Turborepo monorepo split into a shared core package (git-aware sync layer, frontmatter handling, agent registry), a Hono-based local server that exposes the collaboration and agent endpoints, a Vite/React app combining Tiptap, CodeMirror, and Excalidraw for rich editing, a cli package installable as @inkeep/open-knowledge, and an Electron desktop shell. Git and GitHub power sync and no-code team sharing, so a folder can go from a private local wiki to a shared, versioned knowledge base without adopting a separate CMS or database.

The project is GPL-3.0-or-later licensed and fully open source, with an unusually strict internal engineering discipline, including a custom lint-enforced ‘no source comments’ policy and multi-tier CI (unit, integration, e2e, accessibility, and visual regression), visible directly in the public repository.

What You Get

• WYSIWYG Markdown/MDX editing that feels like a rich text editor while keeping plain Markdown files as the underlying source of truth
• Desktop apps for macOS, Windows, and Linux, plus a local web UI and CLI (ok init, ok start) that runs anywhere Node.js 24+ is available
• Real-time multiplayer editing powered by Hocuspocus/Yjs CRDTs, including live cursors and presence for both human and AI-agent collaborators
• A built-in MCP server and Agent Client Protocol support so Claude, Codex, OpenCode, and other harnesses can read, search, and co-edit documents through the same live session
• A file navigator, full-text search, tabbed editing, and a graph view for visualizing wiki-style links between notes
• Git/GitHub-backed sync and no-code team sharing without needing a separate database or CMS
• Embeddable HTML and rich components for writing engineering specs and visual reports directly in Markdown

Common Use Cases

• Building a personal or team second brain from existing Markdown notes
• Turning a codebase’s docs folder into an LLM-searchable wiki
• Pairing with AI coding agents (Claude, Codex, OpenCode) in a shared live document
• Migrating an Obsidian vault or plain docs site into a richer editor without changing file formats
• Sharing a git-backed knowledge base across a team without a separate wiki SaaS

Under The Hood

Architecture OpenKnowledge is a pnpm/Turborepo monorepo cleanly layered around a shared packages/core domain layer (git-repository and shadow-repo-layout sync, frontmatter handling, agent-registry, checkpoint kinds) that both a Hono-based packages/server and the CLI/desktop shells depend on. The server exposes real-time collaboration (Hocuspocus CRDT sync), Agent Client Protocol thread management, and agent presence/focus broadcasting as composable exports (agent-sessions.ts, agent-focus.ts, acp/thread-manager.ts) rather than a monolithic app, so the same server core can be embedded by the Electron desktop shell, the CLI’s local web server, or tests. The packages/app React/Vite editor and packages/cli entrypoint are thin consumers of this shared core, and a git working tree, not a database, is the durable source of truth throughout, reconciled through a CRDT-aware agent-write path that lets concurrent human and AI edits land on the same Markdown file without one silently clobbering the other.

Tech Stack The stack is TypeScript end to end, built with pnpm workspaces and a Turborepo pipeline. The server layer combines Hono, @hono/node-server, Hocuspocus/Yjs for CRDT sync, and both @modelcontextprotocol/sdk and @agentclientprotocol/sdk for agent integrations, instrumented throughout with OpenTelemetry traces and metrics. The editor app is built with Vite and React, using Tiptap/ProseMirror for rich-text editing, CodeMirror 6 for embedded code, Excalidraw for diagrams, dnd-kit for drag-and-drop, and Lingui for i18n. The desktop shell is Electron, packaged per-platform with electron-builder and backed by a small Rust native-config crate for native OS integration, while the CLI is bundled with tsdown and published to npm as @inkeep/open-knowledge.

Code Quality The repo carries an unusually large, colocated test suite (thousands of .test.ts/.test.tsx files) run through Vitest across dedicated unit, DOM, integration, conversion, performance-regression, health, e2e, accessibility, and visual-regression tiers (tier1/tier2/tier3 scripts plus separate Playwright configs for a11y, visual, and packaged-app testing). Linting runs both Biome and oxlint (including type-aware oxlint-tsgolint checks) alongside a custom-built no-comments lint plugin that enforces a deliberate write-no-comments policy across the TypeScript codebase, with Husky/lint-staged pre-commit gating and drift checks for schema snapshots, i18n coverage, and third-party notices. This is backed by an extensive GitHub Actions setup covering desktop builds for Windows, Linux, and macOS plus dedicated release and verification pipelines.

What Makes It Unique The defining idea is extending real-time CRDT collaborative editing, the same technology behind Google Docs-style multiplayer, to AI coding agents as first-class participants rather than one-shot diff generators: through ACP and MCP, an agent like Claude Code or Codex can open a live session inside a document a human already has open, with its own presence, cursor, and focus broadcast alongside human collaborators, and have its writes merged conflict-free by the same engine used for human-to-human editing. That is paired with a git-native shadow-repo sync layer that lets any existing folder, codebase, or Obsidian vault become collaborative instantly without a data-format migration, and with an unusual, tool-enforced policy that bans source code comments entirely in favor of names, tests, and structured docs carrying all explanatory intent.

Self-Hosting

Licensing Model GPL-3.0-or-later licensed — the full editor, server, CLI, and desktop apps are open source with no license keys or paid-tier gating found anywhere in the codebase.

Self-Hosting Restrictions None found. No ee/, enterprise/, pro/, or cloud/ directories, and no license-check or feature-flag code gating functionality behind a paid plan.

License Key Required No.