SiYuan
ActiveDescription
A privacy-first, self-hosted, fully open-source personal knowledge management software with block-level references, bi-directional links, Markdown, AI enhancement and plugin extensions.
Key Features
- Block-level references and bi-directional links - inspired by Roam Research, blocks can be referenced from multiple places and automatically tracked
- Fully local-first - data stored locally on user devices, no cloud upload, optional end-to-end encrypted sync
- Native Markdown - supports standard Markdown plus LaTeX, Mermaid, flowcharts, syntax highlighting
- Plugin extensions - supports writing plugins in SQL or JavaScript, integrate AI services (GPT, Claude, local models)
- Database views - blocks can become database fields, supports table, kanban, calendar views
- Multi-device sync - supports self-hosted sync via third-party object storage (S3, WebDAV)
Use Cases
💡 Researchers use it to manage paper notes, cross-disciplinary project materials and literature indexes, with AI plugins auto-generating summaries.
💡 Software engineers use it to record technical decisions, code snippets, ops manuals, building searchable team knowledge bases.
💡 Students use it to build course note networks, block-level references automatically establish connections between knowledge points.
Strengths & Limitations
✅ Strengths
- • Actively maintained, recent updates
- • High community interest (45.8k stars)
- • Established track record (5 years in production)
- • Responsive to issues, low backlog
⚠️ Limitations
- • Restrictive license (AGPL-3.0)
Categories
Quick Start
```bash
# Docker deployment
docker run -d --name siyuan \
-v /your/path/siyuan:/siyuan/workspace \
-p 6806:6806 \
b3log/siyuan --listen 0.0.0.0:6806
# Visit http://localhost:6806 to start using
```