zen
From public sourcesSelfhosted notes app. Single golang binary, notes stored as markdown within SQLite, full-text search, very low resource usage
Overview
- markdown
- mcp-server
- notes
- preact
- sqlite
Installation
Commands are shown, never run by the marketplace. Check them against the official documentation.- Official websiteFrom public sourcesfrom catalog metadatawww.sheshbabu.com/zen/ ↗
- Build from sourceFrom public sourcesfrom catalog metadata
Build from source: no validated build recipe — follow the repository instructions.
github.com/sheshbabu/zen ↗
Compatibility
Unknown means no evidence was found — not that the product is incompatible.| Platform | Status | Architecture | Evidence | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude (web & desktop) | Unknown | — | — | — |
| Claude Code | Unknown | — | — | — |
| Cursor | Unknown | — | — | — |
| VS Code | Unknown | — | — | — |
| Windsurf | Unknown | — | — | — |
| ChatGPT | Unknown | — | — | — |
Releases
checked Oct 30, 2026No releases found on the source.
Quality profile
algorithm quality-v1.0 · assessed Oct 16, 2026Quality Score76
Risk Score0
Quality Score and Risk Score are different measures. A high score does not guarantee safety.
Score components
Maintenance · 2020
Documentation · 1515
Ready to use · 159
Metadata · 1010
Releases · 102
Category confidence · 105
Adoption · 108
License clarity · 55
Community · 53
License
AGPL-3.0This is the catalog policy status, not legal advice.
Sources
github.com/sheshbabu/zenPrimary★ 1,182 starslast activity Oct 15, 2026Primary repository · Confidence 1.00
Reviews
No reviews yet.
Alternatives
stashbaseSimilar
An open-source, local-first writing workspace where you can write with Claude Code and Codex, drawing on your own sources and past work.Apache-2.0 · MCP ServersworldmonitorSimilar
Real-time global intelligence dashboard. AI-powered news aggregation, geopolitical monitoring, and infrastructure tracking in a unified situational awareness interfaceAGPL-3.0 · MCP ServersScraplingSimilar
🕷️ An adaptive Web Scraping framework that handles everything from a single request to a full-scale crawl! Don't be shy, join here: https://discord.gg/EMgGbDceNQ and follow here for daily tips and tricks: https://x.com/Scrapling_devBSD-3-Clause · MCP Servers
context7Similar
reactive-resumeSimilargpt-researcherSimilar
An autonomous agent that conducts deep research on any data using any LLM providersApache-2.0 · MCP ServersREADME
From sheshbabu/zen · license AGPL-3.0 · fetched Oct 30, 2026Features
- Single Go binary or Docker Compose
- Low resource usage
- Standard Markdown files, local SQLite database
- Organize with flexible tags, not rigid folders
- Markdown features like tables, code blocks, task lists, highlights, and more
- Full-text search with BM25 ranking
- Import and export data with full portability
- Templates
- Pinned notes
- Archive and soft delete notes
- Bulk archive and delete
- Version history
- Internal note links with side panel preview
- Minimal dependency footprint
- Automated backups (via Zen Backup)
- Import from other services (via Zen Import)
Experimental Features
- Canvas for spatial organization of notes and images (stored as JSON Canvas)
- Semantic search for notes and images (via Zen Intelligence)
- Similar images (via Zen Intelligence)
- MCP for searching, listing and reading notes
Installation
Build from source
$ make build
Local Development
Run the application using default configuration
$ make dev
Run the application in watch mode
$ go install github.com/air-verse/air@latest
$ go install github.com/evanw/esbuild/cmd/esbuild@latest
$ make watch
Schema Migrations
- Create new migration file under
./migrations - Use the format
<version>_<title>.sql
Image Versioning
$ git tag x.y.z
$ git push origin x.y.z
Contributions
This is a personal project built for my own use. The codebase is available for forking and modifications. Note that I may not actively review pull requests or respond to issues due to time constraints.