Tolaria

Tolaria is a desktop app for macOS, Windows, and Linux for managing markdown knowledge bases. People use it for a variety of use cases:

• Operate second brains and personal knowledge
• Organize company docs as context for AI
• Store OpenClaw/assistants memory and procedures

Personally, I use it to run my life (hey [Luca here](http://x.com/lucaronin)). I have a massive workspace of 10,000+ notes, which are the result of my Refactoring (opens in a new tab) work + a ton of personal journaling and second braining.

Walkthroughs

You can find some Loom walkthroughs below — they are short and to the point:

• How I Organize My Own Tolaria Workspace (opens in a new tab)
• My Inbox Workflow (opens in a new tab)
• How I Save Web Resources to Tolaria (opens in a new tab)

Principles

• Files-first — Your notes are plain markdown files. They're portable, work with any editor, and require no export step. Your data belongs to you, not to any app.
• Git-first — Every vault is a git repository. You get full version history, the ability to use any git remote, and zero dependency on Tolaria servers.
• Offline-first, zero lock-in — No accounts, no subscriptions, no cloud dependencies. Your vault works completely offline and always will. If you stop using Tolaria, you lose nothing.
• Open source — Tolaria is free and open source. I built this for myself (opens in a new tab) and for sharing it with others.
• Standards-based — Notes are markdown files with YAML frontmatter. No proprietary formats, no locked-in data. Everything works with standard tools if you decide to move away from Tolaria.
• Types as lenses, not schemas — Types in Tolaria are navigation aids, not enforcement mechanisms. There's no required fields, no validation, just helpful categories for finding notes.
• AI-first but not AI-only — A vault of files works very well with AI agents, but you are free to use whatever you want. We support Claude Code, Codex CLI, and Gemini CLI setup paths, but you can edit the vault with any AI you want. We provide an AGENTS file for your agents to figure out.
• ⌨ Keyboard-first — Tolaria is designed for power-users who want to use keyboard as much as possible. A lot of how we designed the Editor and the Command Palette is based on this.
• Built from real use — Tolaria was created for manage my personal vault of 10,000+ notes, and I use it every day. Every feature exists because it solved a real problem.