Synapse¶

Synapse logo

Self-hosted AI wiki that organizes itself.

Drop in raw documents — Synapse reads them, writes interlinked wiki pages, builds a weighted knowledge graph, and lets you chat with your own knowledge base, with citations.

What's new in v2.1.0

The native iOS app was rebuilt from the ground up — a brand-matched design system and a native 5-tab shell (Home · Wiki · Chat · Graph · More) — plus a backend/frontend cleanup batch (retry-with-context for non-converged ingest runs, further component splits, CSP flake fixed at its root cause). See v2.1.0 release notes for full details, or browse the full changelog.

What it does¶


📥 Ingest anything	Markdown, PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX — via file watcher, upload, scheduled folder import, or the Chrome web clipper. An LLM analyzes each source and writes typed, interlinked wiki pages.
🕸️ Knowledge graph	4-signal edge weighting, server-side ForceAtlas2 layout, Louvain communities, WebGL rendering (sigma.js). Never freezes your browser.
💬 Chat with citations	4-phase retrieval (vector → graph expansion → token budget → assembly) over your wiki, streamed answers with `[n]` citations, save-to-wiki.
🔍 Deep research	Bounded agentic loop over SearXNG web search → synthesized, cited pages, auto-ingested.
🧑‍⚖️ Human in the loop	Review queue for AI proposals, bounded lint-fix loop with human-gated apply, cascade delete with dry-run.
🔌 Bring your own AI	Pluggable inference provider: Local (Ollama), API (Anthropic / OpenAI-compatible), CLI (claude-agent-sdk). Switch per vault or per operation.
📦 Obsidian-compatible	The `wiki/` folder is a valid Obsidian vault: YAML frontmatter, `[[wikilinks]]`, auto-generated `.obsidian/`.
🤖 MCP server	Nine read/write tools (search, get/write page, graph neighborhood, review queue, ...) exposed over stdio and HTTP — talk to your wiki from Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or any MCP client.
🖥️ Desktop app	Native macOS/Windows app (Tauri v2, ~6 MB) with auto-update from GitHub Releases. Point it at your server and go.
📱 iOS app	Native SwiftUI client (iOS 17+) — Home, Wiki, Chat, Graph, and review queue against your own server, brand-matched to the desktop UI.

Quick start (server)¶

git clone https://github.com/Emanuele-Chiummo/llm-wiki-synapse.git
cd llm-wiki-synapse
cp .env.example .env        # configure DB, Ollama/Qdrant endpoints, provider
docker compose up -d

Open http://localhost:8000 (API) — serve the frontend with make dev or any static host. Requires: Docker, plus the services you already run — Ollama (inference/embeddings, bge-m3), Qdrant (vectors), optionally SearXNG (web search).

Desktop app¶

Download the latest .dmg (macOS) or .exe (Windows) from Releases. First launch: enter your backend URL (local servers are auto-detected). Builds are unsigned for now — macOS: right-click → Open; Windows: "More info" → "Run anyway". The app checks GitHub for updates at startup and offers to install them.

iOS app¶

Native SwiftUI client, source in ios/. Not on the App Store yet: build and run it yourself with Xcode (free Apple ID, 7-day install), or produce an unsigned .ipa with ios/build-unsigned-ipa.sh to sideload via AltStore or Sideloadly. TestFlight distribution is wired up but not yet live — it needs a paid Apple Developer Program enrollment. See User Guide §17 for the full walkthrough.

Stack¶

FastAPI · SQLAlchemy 2 · PostgreSQL 16 · Qdrant · bge-m3 · FastMCP — React 19 · Vite · CodeMirror 6 · sigma.js · Zustand — Tauri v2 · Swift/SwiftUI.

Resources¶

User Guide — complete walkthrough of all features
Deploy Guide — TrueNAS SCALE setup, environment config, troubleshooting
Architecture — C4 diagrams (system context, containers, components)
ADRs — Architecture Decision Records documenting design choices
API Reference — OpenAPI specification of all endpoints
Release Notes — per-release changelogs from v1.2 onward
Roadmap — v1.3 → v2.0 feature roadmap (complete)

License¶

Based on the LLM Wiki pattern by Andrej Karpathy (nashsu/llm_wiki), re-engineered for performance and self-hosting.