
Show HN: Archivy – Self-hosted knowledge base embedded into your filesystem - etherio
https://github.com/Uzay-G/archivy
======
siraben
Worth noting that this is written by a 15 year old.

This looks interesting, nice integration with Elasticsearch as well. However,
I see and have tried tools like this several times in the past (tiddlywiki,
org-brain, etc.) and haven't been able to stay on it, always reverting to
paper, or, more recently, reMarkable tablet notebooks. Is it just me or it
requires quite a bit of motivation and dedication to stick to it?

~~~
allenu
It's funny because I used to be more obsessive about storing my knowledge when
I was younger. I kept track of tidbits of information using various systems
(emacs wiki mode or OneNote), but as with you, I always reverted to paper, not
so I could "look up" information again, but as a way of sketching out ideas. I
might refer to the notes a few weeks later, but beyond that, likely not.

Now that I'm in my 40s, I don't care as much about recording information I
encounter (other than for work). If it's worth knowing, I can look it up
again. If not, ignorance is bliss.

~~~
grugagag
Same here, 40 and not very information junky anymore. But it probably has to
do with the fact that anything is nowadays searchable online and also that
there is so much information (even here on HN) that if you save it even
selectively it is a sea of information. I use the "one tab" plugin and rather
than closing the tab I save it to the one tab archive. Most of the time I
never look at it again

~~~
nikisweeting
I noticed this was the case when I used tools that made it hard to search
through my archives. But once I switched to tools with better full-text
search, I actually find myself using my archive all the time. It turns out
just knowing that I have it and that its easy to search lets me rely on it a
lot more when doing research on things I've read about before.

~~~
grugagag
It could be and you're probably right, I just personally lost interest in
preserving too much information. Of course once in a while I come across a
piece of info that I do save but whatever I slap into some text files is
enough to me, most of the time I don't need to look it up anyway or I forget
it even exists. And regularly I purge it and that feels good. Maybe I've
reached my limits... But I do understand the need if one's line of work
requires to or there's a need to for research, these tools can be very useful.

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Naac
A much more complete version of this is tiddlywiki:

[https://tiddlywiki.com/](https://tiddlywiki.com/)

~~~
etherio
I saw this, and it seemed interesting but I had a few problems with it:

A) doesn't embrace the same idea of building your own digital garden that
holds nt only your notes but also automatically syncs with different services
like hn, pocket etc to save your digital presence locally.

B) Flexibility of search. Archivy uses elastic search with a neat nlp pipeline
to process data and allow it to be searched with accuracy. This is all
configured in elastic-search.json and the user can configure it to his needs
as he pleases.

C) Ease of use and minimal interface. Archivy has a simple direct UI and its
goal is NOT to become a note taking app nor does it pretend to.

You can directly search at the top and then you have a tree view of your data
organised in folders.

~~~
nikisweeting
I'd be curious to hear more, your goals seem to be very similar to mine with
ArchiveBox. I'd love to chat with you and learn more about your
project/approach to archiving!

~~~
etherio
I'd love to! Where can we chat?

~~~
makeworld
Not parent but here's his Github:

[https://github.com/pirate/](https://github.com/pirate/)

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stakkur
I accomplish this with Emacs + Org-roam. And it's a 'forever' file system, all
text. [https://www.orgroam.com/](https://www.orgroam.com/)

------
clashmeifyoucan
Nice idea, it would be interesting if you could integrate the wayback machine
so it archives the webpage you add. That way even if the original page gets
deleted, a snapshot will be permanently archived.

~~~
masukomi
a) it does better

> If you add bookmarks, their webpages contents' will be saved to ensure that
> you will always have access to it

b) It's not inline with the idea of archiving things you care about. If you
don't control it you can't rely on it. You definitely can't rely on wayback
machine to always exist. Someone's got to keep paying for those servers and
it's not a huge profit center, and there have been questions regarding its
survival before because of lack of money.

~~~
clashmeifyoucan
> a) it does better

that's not very interesting because when I find an interesting read I rarely
bookmark it. For me bookmarks are links that I visit often.

> b)

that is a fair point, however I think the wayback way is still not too shabby
an idea. It ensures there's a copy snapshotted just in case, and yes it might
not last forever but it's done a fantastic job so far so not trusting it now
just because it'll not survive sounds a minor risk imho.

~~~
homarp
it's not "browser" bookmark. It's "add a bookmark" into the app

see
[https://github.com/Uzay-G/archivy/blob/master/main/templates...](https://github.com/Uzay-G/archivy/blob/master/main/templates/bookmarks/new.html)

it's just a form where you paste the URL of the site you're interested.

~~~
masukomi
so? I don't understand why this is a meaningful statement.

Lots of us use Pinboard.in or similar "bookmark" services. They aren't
"Browser bookmarks" they're just forms in some separate app too. We find them
more useful than browser bookmarks. The pasting can easily be worked around
with a simple bookmarklet.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

~~~
homarp
clashmeifyoucan was saying "For me bookmarks are links that I visit often"
which I interpreted as "browser bookmark".

When I read the description of Archivy, I had the same impression (it somehow
captures the action of bookmarking).

So I looked at the code to see how it was done, and in fact, as you said, it's
more like a local pinboard/similar "bookmark" services.

No real point to make, just clarify what 'bookmark' it was.

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stfwn
Cool! I really like the (upcoming) idea of watching your own online profiles
on HN and such for upvotes and saving those pages. It’s essentially what I
already use those upvotes for in my head, but not what they are in reality.

~~~
etherio
Yeah I'm really excited about that idea of building a digital garden based on
the stuff you enjoy online AND your notes.

~~~
pbronez
I wonder if there’s a reasonable way to extend this to structured quantified
self data... Fitbit steps, calorie logs, chat logs, etc.

That stuff won’t fit the “markdown with a header” format too well,
unfortunately. Would probably need to add a SQLite or DuckDB [0] storage
engine.

[0] [https://duckdb.org/](https://duckdb.org/)

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djhworld
Pretty cool.

Instead of elastic search you could also use SQLite5 with its full text search
support.

~~~
nikisweeting
That + ripgrep is how we're planning to do full-text search in ArchiveBox.io,
seems much more appealing than running a full ElasticSearch cluster.

~~~
cmckn
A grisly death is more appealing than running a full Elasticsearch cluster :)

------
ainiriand
I was absolutely coding exactly the same pet project. This one is so much
better than mine!

Kudos. Very good job.

------
jitl
I love to see the web-page archiving. Curious about how you see your tool
versus Obsidian. Have you checked out Obsidian? Similarly uses markdown and
front matter on the local filesystem.

~~~
masukomi
can't speak for the author but:

* obsidian is a proprietary piece of software so you can't rely on it for long term archival. There's zero guarantee the company that makes it will exist next year and keep updating it to work with new operating systems.

* obsidian doesn't download page contents

* obsidian doesn't handle bookmarks in any notable way.

While they both use markdown, and can store notes the similarity pretty much
ends there.

~~~
osmarks
It _does_ use flat files for storage, so there's not much lockin there.

~~~
groby_b
And the flat files are IIRC markdown, so it works just fine for long term
archival.

