Crowi is a Markdown-based wiki designed for team knowledge sharing, offering a modern, extensible platform for collaborative documentation. It addresses the need for a centralized, easily navigable knowledge base with features like real-time editing and AI integration, benefiting teams looking to empower their members with accessible information.

How It Works

Crowi v2 ("Reignite") features a modern stack comprising a Hono API, Next.js 16 (App Router) frontend, and React 19. Core functionality includes real-time collaborative editing powered by Yjs and Hocuspocus. Its architecture is highly pluggable, allowing customization of storage, search, rendering, and mail services through npm packages. This approach offers flexibility and extensibility without requiring core code modifications.

Quick Start & Requirements

Local development requires Node.js 24.x and pnpm 10.x. A MongoDB and Redis instance are mandatory, with optional support for Elasticsearch or OpenSearch as search backends. Docker Compose is recommended for setting up local infrastructure. The primary development command is pnpm dev after installing dependencies with pnpm install. Sensitive configuration encryption requires generating a CROWI_ENCRYPTION_KEY. Official documentation and release notes for v2 are available on Zenn.

Highlighted Details

• Real-time collaborative editing via Yjs and Hocuspocus.
• Embedded Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for AI agent integration.
• Supports OAuth 2.0 and personal access tokens for authentication.
• Pluggable architecture for storage (local, S3), search (Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, MongoDB-native), mail (SMTP, Resend, SES), and renderers (emoji, KaTeX, PlantUML).
• Sensitive configuration encryption using AES-256-GCM.
• Includes an end-user CLI (@crowi/cli) for interacting with the API.
• Monorepo structure managed by Turborepo and pnpm workspaces.

Maintenance & Community

Crowi v1.x is deprecated and unmaintained. Version 2 ("Reignite") is in active prerelease, with the latest being 2.0.0-alpha.3. Progress is tracked in TODO.md and via v2 announcements on Zenn. Specific community links (e.g., Discord, Slack) are not detailed in the provided README.

Licensing & Compatibility

The project is licensed under the MIT License (MIT). This license is permissive and generally allows for commercial use and integration into closed-source projects.

Limitations & Caveats

Crowi v2 is currently in an alpha prerelease state, meaning its API and configuration surface may change before a stable release. Users are advised to use published releases rather than the main branch HEAD for deployments. The v1.x line is no longer maintained.