open-knowledge

OpenKnowledge is a markdown editor designed to feel like Notion or Google Docs, but with built-in AI integration. It lets you write and manage notes, specs, wikis, and knowledge bases that AI assistants like Claude, Codex, and Cursor can directly read and edit alongside you. Everything stays private on your local machine, and the tool is free to use.

At its core, the tool takes your plain text markdown files and presents them in a polished, visual interface with a file navigator, tabs, search, and even a graph view showing how your documents link together. The AI collaboration happens through something called MCP, which is essentially a bridge that lets AI coding assistants understand and modify your documents. When you open a folder of existing markdown files, the app automatically detects which AI tools you have installed and sets up the connections for you.

The people who get the most out of this are likely developers, technical writers, and product teams who already work with markdown files and use AI assistants in their workflow. For example, if you maintain an engineering wiki or project documentation, you could have Claude draft a launch recap directly in your editor, or let Cursor update a spec document based on a conversation. It also works well for anyone who keeps notes in plain text formats and wants their AI tools to have access to that knowledge.

A few things stand out about how the project is built. Team sharing and auto-sync are powered by git and GitHub under the hood, which means your documents version naturally without a proprietary backend. There's a macOS desktop app, but users on Linux, Windows, or Intel Macs can run the same editor through a command line tool that serves it as a local web app in the browser. It also includes a terminal interface for users who prefer that environment.

The project is open source and welcomes community contributions.