zen
Selfhosted notes app. Single golang binary, notes stored as markdown within SQLite, full-text search, very low resource usage
Install with your AI
Paste into Claude Code, Cursor, or any agent — it reads the repo and wires the tool into your project.
Install and set up zen (git-clone project) into my current project. Found on https://claudeers.com/zen Repo: https://github.com/sheshbabu/zen Homepage/docs: https://www.sheshbabu.com/zen/ Detected install method: git-clone → git clone https://github.com/sheshbabu/zen Category: uncategorized. Platforms: api, web, mobile. Read the repo's README for exact setup and env vars, then install it and wire it into my project. Claudeers Health Verdict: active; community-verified: false. Confirm the source before running anything.
git clone https://github.com/sheshbabu/zen
// compatibility
| Platforms | api, web, mobile |
|---|---|
| Operating systems | — |
| AI compatibility | claude |
| License | AGPL-3.0 |
| Pricing | open-source |
| Language | JavaScript |
Zen
Live Demo • Features • Updates
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
- Minimal dependency footprint
- Automated backups (via Zen Backup)
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.
Thanks
// faq
What is zen?
Selfhosted notes app. Single golang binary, notes stored as markdown within SQLite, full-text search, very low resource usage. It is open-source on GitHub.
Is zen free to use?
zen is open-source under the AGPL-3.0 license, so it is free to use.
What category does zen belong to?
zen is listed under uncategorized in the Claudeers registry of Claude-compatible tools.
// embed badge
[](https://claudeers.com/zen)
// retro hit counter
[](https://claudeers.com/zen)
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