This app is in active development and not yet ready for everyday use.
You're welcome to explore but proceed at your own risk and expect bugs, missing docs, incomplete features etc!
The customizable database for your brain. Note-taking, task-management, personal knowledge bases and more.
The foundation of Headbase is the abilty to create markdown files, track version history and sync these files between devices. You can then customize your experience with features such as "fields" and "content types" to enhance your editing experience, and "views" to transform your files into a queryable database with results displayed as a list, kanban board, calendar, canvas or graph.
A big driving force of building Headbase is to explore the concepts of local-first software and malleable systems. The goal is not to just create a "notes app" or a "task management" app, but to build an app which provides building blocks for users to combine as they wish while retaining ownership of their own data.
Headbase is currently built as progressive web app which reads and write files to the browser Origin private file system, however future plans include developing a desktop application to read/write to the native file system so users can have more direct ownership and control over their files.
TODO - Explain basic concepts of treating files and server as a "document-based" data store with user defined types.
All content in Headbase is stored in a "vault" and you can create as many as you want, examples might include "Personal", "Work", "Project 1", "Project 2" etc.
Each vault is completely seperate, however you are able to import/export your data between vaults.
When creating a vault you pick an "unlock passowrd" which will be used to encrypt/decrypt the content on your device.
If you want to learn more about how this encryption works, you can check out the encryption specification.
Headbase is a local-first progressive web app (PWA), meaning that by default all your data is stored on your device. There is no server or internet connection required after you've visited the app for the first time, as the app will be cached for offline use.
If you wish to enable features like cloud backups and cross-device synchronisation, you can do this by self-hosting your own server.
Headbase uses client-side encryption to encrypt content on your device, which means that the server is unable to decrypt and access your content.
Headbase aims to support desktop and mobile devices using Firefox, Google Chrome or other Chromium-based browsers like Brave etc.
Safari on macOS and iPhone is not officially supported right now because Headbase is built by one developer who doesn't use Safari or own an iPhone!
Support for Safari also has several unique challenges such as intelligent tracking prevention deleting website data after 7 days of inactivity,
Safari not enabling tab navigation by default, and Apple's historic hostility towards progressive web apps.
Safari might still work for you, however please bear in mind that it is mostly untested and issues are unlikely to be prioritised and may not be fixed at all.
If you want to understand how Headbase is built and poke around the code then you can view the developer documentation.
This documentation is currently incomplete and possibly outdated in places due to ongoing development and changes. Here are few key points:
- The project is structured as a monorepo, all projects including the web app and server can be found in the
./packagesfolder. - The front-end web app is built using React, Tailwind and Vite.
- SQLite is used for data storage, specifically the WASM build of SQLite3MultipleCiphers to provide encryption support.
- The back-end server is built using Node.js, and provides an HTTP API and Websockets interface for user management and content backup/syncronisation.
This project is open source, not open contribution.
This is a personal project in its early stages. You're more than welcome to try it out, ask questions, raise bug reports etc but
it wouldn't be practical to accept external code contributions or feature requests at this time.
I'm open to this changing in the future once the project is more stable though, collaboration is one of the great things about open-source after all!
All parts of Headbase are released under the GNU AGPLv3 license.