zen

Features

• 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

Install air and esbuild

$ 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.

Thanks

• go-sqlite3
• Standalone Preact Builder
• markdown-it
• highlight.js
• Lucide Icons
• CSS Reset
• Konva.js