tolaria

Tolaria is a free, open source desktop app for macOS, Windows, and Linux that helps you manage a personal knowledge base made up of plain markdown files. You store notes as regular files on your computer, organized however you like, and Tolaria gives you an interface to browse, edit, and search them. Because the notes are just files, they work with any other text editor too, and you can take them with you if you ever stop using Tolaria.

Every collection of notes, called a vault, is stored as a git repository. This means you get a full history of every change you have ever made, and you can sync your vault to any git hosting service you already use, without creating an account with Tolaria or paying a subscription. The app works completely offline and keeps no data on external servers.

Tolaria is designed to work well with AI tools. The vault format is a folder of plain files, which is something AI coding assistants like Claude Code or Gemini CLI can read and work with directly. The app includes setup paths for several of those tools, and provides a file called AGENTS so that any AI assistant can understand the structure of your vault. You are free to use whatever AI tool you prefer.

The app is built with Tauri, React, and TypeScript, and is installed either through Homebrew on macOS or by downloading a release from the project website. A getting-started vault is available to clone when you first open the app, and it walks you through the main features. User documentation lives in the repository and is published as a website through GitHub Pages.

Types in Tolaria are categories you can assign to notes to help you find them more easily. They are navigation shortcuts rather than strict rules, so there are no required fields and no validation errors if you do not follow a particular structure. The project was built by its creator to manage a personal workspace of more than 10,000 notes and is shared publicly for others to use.