What is homekb?

HomeKB turns a folder of plain Markdown notes on your own computer into a searchable knowledge base that AI tools can read and use, without ever moving your notes into someone else's cloud. You keep writing ordinary text files, and a small engine running locally builds a search index from them, so you can find notes by meaning rather than exact wording, ask questions about your notes and get answers backed by citations to the actual files, and let AI assistants like Claude or ChatGPT search, read, and update your notes directly. The system is made of three separate pieces. The engine is the core program that does the actual work: reading your Markdown files, building the search index, answering questions, and talking to AI tools through a standard connector protocol. The client is a single interface built once and shown two ways, as a plain website and as a native desktop app for Mac. The relay is what lets your phone or a browser somewhere else reach the engine running on your home computer, but it only passes messages back and forth and never stores your actual notes. Getting started means installing the engine on your computer through a package manager or install script, then running a single pairing command that generates a short lived code. You enter that code on a companion website from your phone or another browser to finish setup, after which that device can search, read, and edit your notes remotely while the files themselves never leave your home machine. You also have the option to skip the browser setup entirely and configure and use everything from the command line instead. Once connected, HomeKB gives any compatible AI assistant a consistent set of tools for searching, reading, creating, updating, listing, and sharing your notes. It also lets you create shareable public links to individual notes, with optional passwords and expiry dates, while keeping any notes you have not chosen to share private on your own device.