What it is
SiYuan is an app for personal knowledge bases and notes. It emphasizes privacy, local data, and open source.
The project appeared in the space of note tools where users need not only to write text, but also to connect knowledge, documents, and daily records.
SiYuan’s main task is to provide a working environment for long-lived notes: blocks, documents, links, a knowledge graph, attachments, and synchronization.
How the project is built
Inside the project are TypeScript and Go, a desktop app, server parts, an app market, installation packages, and architecture documentation.
SiYuan is close to a local-first idea: data should remain useful on the user’s device, and synchronization should not make notes hostage to a cloud.
How people use it
A normal scenario is to keep daily notes, split knowledge into blocks, link documents, and gradually build a personal map of topics.
For researchers, students, and writing professionals, the project is useful because notes can be developed through connections, not only stored.
Practical example
An atomic note shape
This example shows typical knowledge-base material: a short block, a linked idea, and a follow-up task.
## Индекс заметок
- [[Проектирование базы знаний]]
- [[Ежедневные записи]]
TODO: связать заметку с источником и примером.The project’s strength is the combination of a block model and full documents. Users can work with small fragments and long materials.
Strengths
Another advantage is the open ecosystem: users can better understand where data lives and how extensions are built.
The limitation is that knowledge systems require discipline. The tool will not decide which notes to connect or how to keep order.
Limitations
Its rich functionality can also feel heavy for people who only need a simple folder of text files.
SiYuan best fits people who treat notes as a working system rather than a random folder of texts.
Who it fits
For team or public knowledge bases, collaboration, access rights, and publishing process need separate evaluation.
In the catalog, SiYuan matters as an open personal tool where notes, graph, and local data control become one product.
A practical start is to move a small knowledge area, set up structure, and check after a week whether finding and extending thoughts became easier.
SiYuan’s strength is not the number of buttons, but the habit of connecting thoughts. If a note remains an isolated text, the user gets a normal notebook. If blocks are linked together, topic maps, fragment reuse, and a more living knowledge base appear. That makes the project especially interesting for people who regularly return to old material.