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Synaptane

Synaptane is a self-hosted team second brain stored in Git. Markdown first, and all your files: pages sit next to PDFs (scans included), Office documents, images and HTML pages, and everything is searchable. Your AI assistants search it and drop what they learn into an inbox over MCP. Every night, an AI agent files those notes into the wiki and commits the result.

Why Synaptane?

Your team explains things to AI assistants every day, and that knowledge disappears when the chat ends. Synaptane gives your assistants a shared, durable memory that you own: plain Markdown pages, with the documents that go with them, in your own Git repository. Assistants don't just read it, they feed it, and an AI agent keeps it organized every night.

• Compared with Notion AI, Confluence or Slite: no lock-in. It is self-hosted, works with the model of your choice, and your data is a Git repository.
• Compared with Outline, Wiki.js, BookStack or Docmost: it is built around AI assistants, and the wiki is maintained for you.
• Compared with Obsidian, Logseq or Basic Memory: it is multi-user and server-side: one memory for the assistants of the whole team.
• Compared with Khoj or AnythingLLM: it does not only answer questions over documents. It curates a knowledge base that people can read and edit.

Features

• Git is the source of truth. Each space is a Git repository (GitHub, GitLab, Gitea or any other host). Its content/ folder is your wiki: Markdown pages and the files that go with them, which you can read, grep and clone without Synaptane. Every change is a commit. Sync works both ways, with conflict resolution.
• Markdown first, and all your files. Pages are Markdown, with links, backlinks and verification. Next to them, PDFs (scanned ones are read by OCR), Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents (and OpenDocument), images, HTML pages, CSV, JSON or code are displayed, searchable and readable by your assistants. See Your files, all searchable.
• Built for AI assistants (MCP). Streamable HTTP with OAuth 2.1 (PKCE, dynamic client registration) or personal tokens. 20 tools and 3 prompts. Tested with Claude.ai, Claude Desktop, Claude Code and ChatGPT connectors. A connection can be limited to read-only or to some spaces.
• Inbox and nightly tidy-up. Drop notes from your assistant, the web UI or the REST API. An AI agent files them, updates existing pages, fixes links and commits. Each space can describe its purpose to guide it. Guardrails: a cap of 10 deletions per run, caps on tokens, steps and tool calls per run, an optional monthly budget, and one-click undo of a run.
• Scheduled agent routines. For example a weekly consistency check or a Friday digest. Output goes to a report page, the inbox, email or a webhook.
• Search that finds things. Full-text search with accent folding and light stemming (English and French), including text extracted from PDF, Office documents and images (OCR). Optional hybrid semantic search (pgvector, RRF). Related pages for each page.
• Knowledge you can trust. Page owners, verification dates and review cycles. A wiki health tab (broken links, orphans, old pages). Probable secrets are refused before any commit.
• Bring your own model. Anthropic, OpenAI, Mistral, Ollama or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, with a key and an optional monthly budget per organization (€20 suggested for a pay-per-use key). A Claude or ChatGPT subscription can also be used through the official CLIs (see Known limitations).
• Made for teams. Organizations, spaces, roles (reader, contributor, organization admin, super admin), email invitations, single sign-on (OIDC, GitHub, GitLab, Google).
• Open APIs. A full REST API and HMAC-signed webhooks. Its OpenAPI schema and interactive documentation are off by default (api_docs setting).
• Easy to run. Docker Compose, behind your own reverse proxy or with a bundled nginx and Let's Encrypt. synaptane doctor checks the installation. Backups are verified, and can be encrypted and copied off-site (age and rclone). Admins get alerts by email.
• A calm, bilingual UI. Light and dark themes, English and French, Ctrl+K search.

Screenshots

Taken on the demo data set (synaptane demo): Acme and its people are fictional.

Ctrl+K search, across all your spaces	Inbox: notes and direct changes waiting to be tidied
Wiki health: broken links, pages to review	History: every change is a Git commit
Connect an AI assistant over MCP	Routines: scheduled agents, such as a weekly consistency check

Your files, all searchable

Markdown is the heart of the wiki, but a space holds any file, added from the web UI (25 MB per file), attached to a note dropped by an assistant, or pushed with Git.

"Meaning" applies to every text above on spaces where semantic search is enabled. The text of the old .doc and .xls is read by catdoc (included in the Docker image), that of the old .ppt by Synaptane itself, with limits: details in Files other than Markdown.

Status

Synaptane is stable since v1.0.0. It is provided as is and maintained on a best-effort basis by one person.

Versions follow Semantic Versioning: within 1.x, the REST API, the MCP tools and the configuration only change in a compatible way. Every change is listed in the changelog. Back up before each upgrade.

Known limitations

• Recent features. Agent routines, related pages and page verification were added shortly before this release. Expect rough edges.

• Claude and ChatGPT subscriptions (Claude Code, Codex). The published image does not include these CLIs: to use a subscription, build the image yourself (see installation). The quota display relies on an undocumented Claude Code event and may stop working after a CLI update. The CLI runs under the same system account as the worker; running it under a separate account is planned.

• Anthropic beta features. With Claude models, Synaptane uses a beta API feature (server-side fallback when a safety filter refuses a request). Beta features can change.

• Costs. Automatic cost estimates exist only for Claude models (and, for semantic search, the embedding models of OpenAI, Gemini, Mistral and Voyage AI). For other providers, enter the price per million tokens yourself: without a price, no cost is computed and no budget can apply. Vectorizing search queries is not counted.

• Not there yet: two-factor authentication; restoring a single page version from the UI (the Git history is there).

• Monitoring: no /metrics endpoint. /healthz and /readyz exist.

• Platforms: Linux, or WSL2 on Windows. macOS is not tested.

• Language: the web UI, emails, REST error messages and documentation are in English and French. The command line, logs and answers to AI assistants (MCP) are in English.

• ChatGPT deep research with the Synaptane connector has not been tested.

Requirements

• A Linux server (or WSL2 to try it out) with Docker Engine and the Compose plugin.
• A domain name served over HTTPS, for Claude.ai and ChatGPT connectors, OAuth and single sign-on. Not needed to try it locally.
• A Git repository per space, on any Git host, reachable over HTTPS or SSH.
• An AI provider, optional. Without one, the wiki, search, the MCP server and the inbox all work. The nightly tidy-up and routines need one. Semantic search needs an embedding provider (Ollama works locally).
• An SMTP server, optional, for email invitations, password reset and alerts.

Quick start

On your server, get the files for the release (Compose file, nginx configuration, scripts), then start the published image:

git clone --branch v1.3.0 https://github.com/synaptane/synaptane.git ~/synaptane
cd ~/synaptane
cp .env.example .env && chmod 600 .env   # it holds the database password
openssl rand -hex 24                     # copy into POSTGRES_PASSWORD
nano .env                                # PUBLIC_URL, POSTGRES_PASSWORD, mode
docker compose pull
docker compose up -d
docker compose exec app synaptane admin create --username admin   # password: 12 characters or more
docker compose exec app synaptane doctor

Git reports a "detached HEAD" after cloning a tag: this is normal. .env.example already pins the image to the release you cloned (SYNAPTANE_VERSION).

Then choose how HTTPS is served, in .env:

• Behind the nginx already on the server (default): Synaptane listens on 127.0.0.1:8000. deploy/host/install-nginx.sh installs the site and its Let's Encrypt certificate.
• All-in-one (COMPOSE_PROFILES=proxy): nginx and certbot run in Docker on ports 80 and 443.

The installation guide covers both modes, upgrades, rollback and building the image yourself.

Try it locally in 2 minutes

git clone --branch v1.3.0 https://github.com/synaptane/synaptane.git && cd synaptane
printf 'PUBLIC_URL=http://localhost:8000\nPOSTGRES_PASSWORD=%s\nSYNAPTANE_VERSION=1.3.0\n' \
  "$(openssl rand -hex 24)" > .env
chmod 600 .env                                                        # database password
echo 'COMPOSE_FILE=compose.yaml:examples/compose.demo.yaml' >> .env   # demo only
docker compose up -d
docker compose exec app synaptane demo

Git reports a "detached HEAD" after cloning a tag: this is normal. Port 8000 already taken? Add APP_PORT=8001 to .env and use the same port in PUBLIC_URL (http://localhost:8001), then in the addresses below.

synaptane demo loads the wiki of a fictional IT team (examples/acme-wiki): 50 pages, verified pages and one to review, six inbox notes waiting to be tidied. It prints the address to open, the password of the demo account (once) and how to connect an AI assistant. Open http://localhost:8000/o/acme/it, search, browse the inbox and the Health tab. Tidying the inbox needs an AI provider: see AI.

The demo space uses a local Git repository, which examples/compose.demo.yaml allows: keep it for a throwaway instance. For a real one, skip that line and create the first account with docker compose exec app synaptane admin create --username admin (installation).

Claude Code can connect to this local instance with a personal token (see below). Claude.ai and ChatGPT need a public HTTPS address.

Connect your AI assistant

Synaptane is an MCP server at https://<your-domain>/mcp. The exact address is shown in My account → Connect an AI assistant (MCP).

• Claude.ai, Claude Desktop: Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, paste the address, then sign in and allow.

• ChatGPT: in developer mode, create a connector with the address and OAuth.

• Claude Code and other clients: create a personal token, then:

  claude mcp add --transport http synaptane https://brain.example.com/mcp \
    --header "Authorization: Bearer syn_…"
  

Full guide, with the list of tools and prompts: Connect your AI assistant (MCP).

Architecture

One FastAPI app serves the three interfaces: MCP for AI assistants, the web UI and the REST API. A worker runs everything in the background: the nightly tidy, agent routines, Git sync, indexing and webhooks. Both share PostgreSQL (with pgvector) and local clones of each space's Git repository. The AI provider is optional: only the tidy, routines and semantic search need one.

Documentation

Every page exists in English and French. Start with the documentation index and the concepts.

• Users: connect your AI assistant (MCP), read, write and search the wiki.
• Administrators: installation, Git repositories, AI and tidy-up, single sign-on, webhooks, backup and restore, server scripts.
• Reference: concepts, repository format, REST API, command line.
• Development: working on the code, evaluation bench.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Read CONTRIBUTING.md first. Commits must be signed off under the Developer Certificate of Origin (git commit -s). Everyone taking part follows the code of conduct. For questions and help, see SUPPORT.md.

Security

Please do not report vulnerabilities in public issues. Use GitHub's private vulnerability reporting, as described in SECURITY.md.

License

Apache-2.0, see LICENSE and THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

The published image does not contain Claude Code or Codex. If you build the image with them (AGENT_CLIS=true, the Dockerfile default), you install third-party software under its own terms.

Synaptane is developed with the help of AI coding assistants (Claude); every change is reviewed by the maintainer.