OpenKnowledge

Overview

OpenKnowledge is an open-source, AI-native markdown editor and knowledge base for humans and agents. It combines a rich WYSIWYG markdown editing experience with desktop and web apps, optional git/GitHub sync, and built-in MCP, skills, and agentic search for LLM wikis, second brains, and engineering documentation.

Key Features

• Full true WYSIWYG editing so markdown files feel like editing a Google Doc or Notion page.
• Desktop apps for macOS, Windows, and Linux plus a web UI with file navigator, search, tabs, and graph wiki link viewer.
• Integrated side-by-side AI editing with Claude, Codex, OpenCode, Pi, and other harnesses via MCP or CLI.
• Out-of-the-box MCP, skills, and agentic search for LLM wikis, second brains, and knowledge graphs.
• No-code team sharing and auto-sync powered by git/GitHub.
• Embeddable HTML and rich components such as callouts, accordions, tabs, Mermaid diagrams, images, and videos.

Use Cases

• Build a living knowledge base or wiki for you and your team with skills, docs, and notes in plain markdown.
• Write engineering specs, PRDs, and roadmaps that live next to code and can be edited by humans and coding agents.
• Create a shared second brain or agent memory that AI agents can read from and write to across sessions.
• Maintain runbooks such as oncall guides, incident postmortems, and deployment runbooks.

Getting Started

• Download the desktop app for macOS, Windows, or Linux from the official OpenKnowledge download page.
• For the web app, install the CLI with Node.js 24+ and git, then run ok init to scaffold the project and ok start --open to serve the editor.
• Open any existing folder on your computer that contains markdown or mdx files to begin editing.

Deployment & Requirements

• Desktop app supports macOS Apple Silicon, Windows 10+ x64/Arm64, and Linux x64/arm64.
• The web app requires Node.js 24+ and git.
• The app runs locally on your machine and is local-first, private by design.
• Git/GitHub based sync and sharing are optional.

Before You Adopt

• License: GPL-3.0. Review its terms before using, modifying, or distributing the project.
• OpenKnowledge is local-first and private by design, with the app running on your machine.
• The project is open source, uses plain files that users own, and is described as self-hostable.
• Git/GitHub-based sync and sharing are optional rather than required.