Tolaria is a free, open-source desktop app for managing markdown knowledge bases. Built by Luca Rossi (author of the Refactoring newsletter, 300+ published articles on software engineering). Available for Mac and Linux.
Architecture
Every note is a plain Markdown file with YAML frontmatter on your local disk. No database, no proprietary format, no account required. Every vault is a Git repository out of the box - full version history, any git remote, zero dependency on Tolaria servers.
Built with Rust + React. 100K lines of code, 1900+ commits, 3000+ tests. Feels like the engineering is serious.
AI-first design
AI-first, not AI-only. Tolaria exposes a full MCP server that makes CLI tools and AI agents work with your notes seamlessly. This makes it a natural fit for workflows involving Claude Code or similar agents.
Why it's interesting
Sits between Obsidian and Notion. Local-first like Obsidian, but with a cleaner, more modern interface. Git-native versioning is a big differentiator. The MCP server integration is forward-thinking for AI-era knowledge management.
