Features
Calm software, built to be lived in.
Octopedia does a small number of things and does them quietly: it listens, it files, it recalls, and it stays out of the way. Here is how each part works.
Capture
One assistant across every channel.
Octopedia joins the conversations your team already has, in iMessage, Slack, Telegram, Discord, and WhatsApp. Voice notes are transcribed and understood the same way. You never stop to write something up, because the writing up is the work it does for you.
- Mention it inline, or message it directly
- Voice notes transcribed and filed automatically
- Every channel feeds one shared team memory
#design Shipped the new vault view
imessage Call moved to Thursday 3pm
voice 2:14 note, transcribed and filed
#hiring Offer sent to the staff engineer
Structure
A vault of plain markdown, versioned in git.
Every person, project, organisation, and event is one markdown file with a small block of frontmatter. Human edits and agent edits land as commits in the same history. Changes merge field by field, so two people writing at once never overwrite each other.
- One file per entity, readable anywhere
- Structured frontmatter your team defines
- Structured merge, never a clobbered note
title: Analytical Engines
status: active
owner: [[ada-lovelace]]
updated: 2026-05-16
tags: [infra, q3]
Recall
Search that picks the right depth for you.
One search box, three tiers underneath it. Typeahead answers before you finish the word. Full-text reaches into every body. Semantic search returns a written answer with citations back to the exact files. You never choose a mode, the question does.
- Typeahead in under sixteen milliseconds
- Full-text across the whole vault under 100ms
- Cited semantic answers in roughly 300ms
answer Ada Lovelace owns it.
cited people/ada-lovelace.md
cited projects/analytical-engines.md
took 312ms
Browse
A local-first client with no Save button.
The desktop and web app run from one codebase on a live local store. Views open in a single frame, edits commit themselves, and the whole vault stays usable offline. It feels less like a database and more like a quietly well-kept wiki.
- Desktop and web from the same build
- Optimistic edits with instant rollback
- Works offline, syncs when you reconnect
People 142
Projects 28
Orgs 61
Events 17
sync up to date
Deployment
Two ways to run it. One codebase.
Start hosted and move in-house later, or never leave your own network at all. The artifact is identical.
Managed cloud
We run it for you.
A multi-tenant cluster with strict per-team isolation, a private git vault provisioned for every team, and updates handled quietly in the background.
- Hosted, maintained, and backed up
- A private vault per team
- Isolated by default
Self-hosted
Runs on your hardware.
One command brings up the whole stack, server, git, database, and TLS, on infrastructure you own. No vault data ever leaves your network.
docker compose upand you are live- Runs anywhere Docker does
- Your network, your rules
Questions
The things people ask first.
Do I need to learn a new app?
No. Octopedia lives in the channels your team already uses. You talk to it the way you would talk to a colleague, and it keeps the record for you. The desktop and web client are there when you want to browse, not a place you are required to visit.
What happens to my data if I stop using Octopedia?
You keep all of it. The vault is an ordinary git repository full of markdown files. Clone it, archive it, or open it in any editor. There is no proprietary format and no export step, because the plain files were the product all along.
Can I host it myself?
Yes. The whole stack runs from a single binary and a docker compose file on hardware you own. The managed cloud and the self-hosted build are the same artifact, so moving between them is a configuration change, not a migration.
How strict is the schema?
As strict as you want it to be, and never strict enough to lose a thought. Your team defines the shape of an entity. When something does not fit, Octopedia still writes it and attaches a quiet advisory note, rather than refusing the write.
Is it open source?
Octopedia is developed in the open on GitHub. You can read the architecture, follow the design decisions, file issues, and build from source today.
Get started
See it on your own vault.
Octopedia is open source. Read the architecture, clone the repository, and have a vault running in minutes.