A local-first knowledge base built on plain Markdown. Your notes live as files on disk -> portable, integrable with any tool, and independent of any cloud service.
Motivation: A Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) system with a fully functional web interface, self-hosted on top of plain Markdown files. Every document, board, canvas, and mind map you create is stored as a standard .md file you can read, edit, move, or process with any other tool — forever.
| Document editor | Kanban board |
|---|---|
 |
 |
| Mind map | Canvas |
|---|---|
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| BlockForgeMD | |
|---|---|
| Storage | Files on your disk, documents as plain .md, visual types as structured containers |
| Hosting | Self-hosted, no cloud required |
| Portability | Documents open in any Markdown editor; all file types are human-readable text |
| Privacy | Your server, your data |
| Integration | Works with git, Obsidian, VSCode, scripts, CI pipelines... anything that reads files |
docker compose up -d --buildThen open http://localhost:8080 and follow the setup wizard.
- Backend — Go, SQLite (metadata index), Chi router
- Frontend — React, Tiptap / ProseMirror, Tailwind CSS
- Deployment — Docker Compose (single container, single port)
A rich Markdown editor built on Tiptap with real-time WYSIWYG editing and full Markdown compatibility.
Inline formatting
- Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, inline code
- Text colour and background highlight (12 colours)
- Superscript / subscript
- Links
Block types — type / to open the command menu
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
# ## ### |
Heading 1 / 2 / 3 |
- |
Bullet list |
1. |
Numbered list |
[] |
Task / checklist |
> |
Blockquote |
``` |
Code block (20+ languages, syntax highlighted) |
/table |
Table grid |
/toc |
Live table of contents (auto-updates with headings) |
/callout |
Callout box: Note, Tip, Warning, Danger, Bug, or custom |
/math |
LaTeX / KaTeX math block (also inline with $formula$) |
/2col /3col |
Multi-column layout |
/embed |
Embed a URL, canvas, or mind map |
/subpage |
Create a nested sub-page inline |
Block operations (right-click any block)
- Move block up / down
- Duplicate block
- Delete block
- Convert / transform to a different block type
- Apply text colour or background colour
Page properties panel (YAML front matter, visible per document)
- Title, icon/emoji, cover image
- Status, priority, tags
- Assignee (from workspace users)
- Due date with optional time picker
- File attachments
- Word count & estimated reading time
Standard Markdown documents with nested sub-pages. The sidebar shows a full tree of all your pages.
Visual task boards stored as Markdown front matter.
- Drag-and-drop cards between columns
- Custom columns (add, rename, reorder, delete)
- Card properties: title, description, priority, due date, assignee, tags, cover image
- Filter bar: filter by assignee, priority, tags, or free-text search
- Focus / highlight modes
Freehand whiteboard powered by Excalidraw. Stored as a .excalidraw.md file in YAML front matter header wrapping Excalidraw's JSON format.
Structured diagramming powered by draw.io. Stored as a .drawio.md file — YAML front matter header wrapping Draw.io's XML format.
Node-based mind mapping powered by Mind Elixir. Stored as a .mindmap.md file: YAML front matter header wrapping Mind Elixir's JSON format.
Interactive force-directed graph of all your documents. Nodes represent pages; edges represent [[wikilinks]] between them. Click any node to open the page.
Group your knowledge into separate workspaces (e.g. Work, Personal, Research). Each workspace has its own Documents, Boards, Canvas, and MindMaps sections. Switch between workspaces from the sidebar.
Full-text search across all documents in the active workspace. Results show a highlighted snippet of the matching context.
Pin any page to the Favourites section in the sidebar for quick access.
Deleted files move to trash. Configurable retention period. Restore or permanently delete from the trash view.
Per-file version history stored in SQLite. Browse and restore any previous version of a document.
Print any document to PDF via the browser print dialog. The editor renders a clean, print-optimised layout.
- Dark — deep black palette, optimised for low-light use
- Light — clean white palette, high contrast, syntax highlighted code blocks use the GitHub Light palette
- JWT-based session authentication
- Bootstrap flow on first launch to create the admin account
- Multi-user support: create and manage users from Settings
- Per-user API keys for programmatic access (read/write via REST API)
The Go backend exposes a REST API that covers all core operations: file CRUD, settings, search, users, workspaces, favourites, history, and trash. Use it with any HTTP client or script.
The full interactive API reference is built in and served at:
http://localhost:8080/docs
A plugin store (Settings → Plugins) for connecting external tools, calendars, and AI providers directly into your workspace.
- Google Calendar — 2-way sync between any page's due date and events on your Google Calendar. See docs/plugins/google-calendar.md for setup (creating a Google OAuth Client, etc). Requires BlockForgeMD to be reachable at a real hostname — Google's OAuth rejects private/LAN IP addresses (e.g.
10.x.x.x,192.168.x.x) as redirect URIs outright. See the doc's requirement callout if you only have a private IP. - MCP Servers, LLM Providers — coming soon.
See docs/plugins/ for the full list and setup guides.
Backend
cd backend
go run ./cmd/serverFrontend
cd frontend
npm install
npm run devThe frontend dev server proxies API requests to localhost:8080.
Every piece of content is a Markdown file with YAML front matter:
---
title: My Note
type: document
tags: [research, draft]
status: In Progress
dueDate: 2026-08-01
---
Your content here, in standard Markdown.Kanban boards, canvases, mind maps, and diagrams embed their data as a fenced code block inside the same .md file — so you can read, diff, and version-control everything with git.
Known limitation — non-Latin titles: the on-disk filename is derived from the title by stripping everything except a-z A-Z 0-9, spaces, and hyphens. A title written entirely in a non-Latin script or in emoji (e.g. fully Japanese, Chinese, Cyrillic, Arabic, or emoji-only) has nothing left after stripping, so creating that page currently fails silently — no file is written and no error is shown. This only affects the generated filename; it's unrelated to git, GitHub, or NAS sync, which are fully Unicode-safe and store file content byte-for-byte regardless of what's inside it.
MIT — Copyright © 2026 RTM