Anytype

Anytype is a local-first, peer-to-peer, end-to-end-encrypted knowledge OS for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Unlike Notion — a hosted cloud service — Anytype stores your "vault" on your devices and syncs them directly between peers using a protocol called any-sync, with no central server. The desktop client is open-source on GitHub, built on Electron + TypeScript, and the core engine is written in Go.

There is no Anytype server to self-host — sync is peer-to-peer across the Anytype network, and each device contributes storage and bandwidth for the network as a whole. You can however self-host your own backup nodes or run Anytype fully offline as a single-device knowledge base. This P2P model is what enables the offline-first, no-account-required experience; authentication is done with an Any-ID that exists only on your devices.

Every object in your vault is encrypted on-device with keys derived from your recovery phrase — Anytype itself never sees the plaintext or the keys. The sync layer uses zero-knowledge encryption so peers can only relay encrypted blobs, meaning no one (including Anytype's operators) can read your data without your key. That is also why losing the recovery phrase means losing the vault: key management is intentionally your responsibility, not the vendor's.

The desktop client and the heart engine are released under the Any Source Available License 1.0 — a source-available license rather than an OSI-approved open-source one. You can read, build, and self-use the code, but the license restricts using it to build competing hosted products, so it is open in the spirit of transparency rather than the OSI sense. The client also exposes a gRPC API for extensibility and ships an Agents framework for custom AI behavior.