hakanshehu

A blog post explaining the journey of building the Colanode sync engine. Colanode is an open-source and local-first collaboration platform.

I’m working on Colanode, which is built to close the gap between the convenience of cloud tools and the ownership of local software. It brings chat, docs, databases, and files into one open-source, self-hostable workspace where data lives on your devices first and syncs in the background. Unlike typical SaaS tools, Colanode is local-first: everything works instantly and offline, infrastructure stays minimal, and you keep full control of your data.

Website: https://colanode.com Repo: https://github.com/colanode/colanode

I did look into it back then, but was not very convenient for my use case. Apart from the data model, I wanted to use Yjs for conflict resolution and wanted more direct control over the sync.

p.s Just wanted to say thank you for all the contribution you do here on HN. Colanode (the app I'm building) is an alternative to Notion and I learned a lot about how you (Notion) build things through reading your comments.

Nice post! I'm building an offline-first collaboration app and went on the route of building a custom sync engine, mainly because the app is open-source and I didn't want to introduce any dependency. I've implemented a simple cursor based sync with Postgres on server and SQLite in client side.

Initially I built only a desktop client, because I didn't like IndexedDB. After the app got into HN, someone recommended to check for OPFS (Origin Private File System).

Now we have a full offline-first app in web using SQLite on top of OPFS. We didn't test it with large scale yet, but so far looks very promising. The good thing is that we use Kysely as an abstraction for performing queries in SQLite which helps us share most of the code across both platforms (electron + web) with some minor abstractions.

You can check the implementation in Github: https://github.com/colanode/colanode

Thanks for pointing it out. Will check our build and release process to fix it.

Thank you! I haven’t used Notesnook personally, but from their description it focuses mainly on note-taking. Colanode, by contrast, also includes collaboration features such as chat, file sharing, and databases. One other difference is that Notesnook offers end-to-end encryption, whereas Colanode does not (at least for now).

Thank you for taking the time to test it and call these issues out. Both points slipped through our refactor/cleanup checklist.

- We’ll replace the current error handling for server sync with something safer and more graceful.

- We’ll make SMTP optional, expose TLS verification as a configurable setting and update the docker-compose.

We’ll make these improvements soon, thanks again for the heads-up.

We have been thinking for some automation/workflows to be executed on specific events. Do you have any example/use case that you might be interested in?

That's an interesting idea. Didn't plan it, but we could implement some kind of custom theme functionality.

Hi, thanks for bringing this up! We don’t have export or migration features in place yet, but we are planning to add them. Which export formats would be most useful to you? And when you mention migration, are you thinking about moving data from similar tools into Colanode or vice-versa? If so, which specific tools would you like to be able to migrate to/from?

Hi, thanks for the question! I haven’t used Huly extensively to provide a detailed comparison, but from a quick look (and a test I did some time ago) it seems to take a more opinionated approach: features such as issues, projects, and overall layout are pre-defined. Colanode, by contrast, works like Notion, giving you flexible building blocks so you can model your own workflows and knowledge structures. Huly may be quicker to get started with, while Colanode offers greater adaptability over time (this comes down to personal preference). Another key distinction is tech architecture: Colanode is built around a local-first design, providing full offline support with background syncing. I haven’t found equivalent offline capabilities documented for Huly, even though they may have them.

Hi, thanks for the question! Yes, we do plan to implement mobile apps, but we don't have a concrete timeline yet. It depends on the limitations and challenges we might face when we implement the same local-first approach as we did in desktop (full offline support, background syncing etc).

Mainly using SQLite and having access to native file system for reading and writing files. We wanted to provide a full offline functionality. While it's possible to achieve that in browser as well it seemed quite complicated for now (we might consider it in the future).

That's a great question! We didn't come to it yet, because we are focused only in desktop app for now. This is definitely one of the challenges we need to solve once we start working on the mobile apps. The self-hosting use case makes it tricky (and probably fun challenge to solve).

Hi! For now, Colanode is available only as a desktop app (Electron). The primary reason is that we wanted to implement some local-first features, which are currently more complex to achieve in the browser.

Thank you! Will look into the download speed issue. As for SSO, we don't have immediate plans, but we'll certainly consider it for the future.

Thank you! We're still working on the hosted offering, hence the "coming soon" pricing page.

Regarding Valkey, I included it as an example of a Redis compatible alternative, but you're right, it's probably better to use it in our Docker Compose file as well. Thanks also for pointing out the licensing considerations around Minio, will definitely look into that.

I've working on Colanode, an open-source & local-first Slack and Notion alternative that you can self host. You can use Colanode for real-time chat, as a knowledge center, project management or file storage. As a local-first application, Colanode offers full offline support, allowing you to work even when you’re not connected to the internet or the server is not available. You can host it in any environment (with minimal dependencies), giving you full ownership and control over your data.

https://github.com/colanode/colanode