I’ve been working for a few months now on my vision of a developer-friendly Markdown wiki.
Maybe you’ve already seen one of my earlier posts about it.
At the beginning of an open-source project, the energy is wild.
You have big ambitions: replace Wiki.js, replace Confluence, build a simpler, cleaner alternative.
The idea for LeafWiki was straightforward:
- Easy to self-host
- Markdown-based content
- No database
- A lightweight tool for internal knowledge sharing
Just download the binary, run it, start writing.
That’s still the heart of it.
The early phase: feature, feature, feature
During the first months I built one feature after another:
- Public pages sounded cool
- Full Markdown file sync from disk sounded powerful
- More features would make more people happy… right?
Well. I can’t achieve everything and keep the focus on the goal:
A wiki for developers without ops pain.
So for me it became clear:
- Public pages aren’t necessary for an internal wiki
- The internal structure should still be determined by
tree.json, not the filesystem — which offers some benefits
A break and a new direction
In August, I took a small break.
While I wasn’t coding, something great happened:
⭐️ LeafWiki reached 16 GitHub stars
🐛 The first user-submitted issue arrived
My first real user, besides myself.
That felt unexpectedly amazing.
Their feature request was simple:
When clicking an internal link, automatically create the page if it doesn’t exist.
Absolutely logical. Very helpful.
I implemented it — and it felt great.
That interaction helped me clarify LeafWiki’s purpose:
This is a wiki for developers and internal teams — not a public website generator.
The closer LeafWiki gets to real developer workflows, the better it becomes.
What I decided to remove
I decided to remove these features from the roadmap:
- Static public pages
- Reading all content directly from Markdown files on disk
What's coming next
- Copy Page — duplicate pages and assets
- Mermaid support
- Auto page creation (already done)
I think these are the right features to work on at the current state.
Do you want to help shape LeafWiki?
LeafWiki is still a young project — which means your feedback will help shape a developer-friendly wiki.
I’d love to hear from you:
- What’s missing?
- What feels unnecessary?
- What is the one feature you think a developer wiki should have?
Drop a comment, open an issue — and maybe leave a ⭐️.
Every star motivates me more. 🙌
🔗 https://github.com/perber/leafwiki
Thanks for reading.
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