Ideon is a self-hosted visual workspace that replaces abstract folder trees with a spatial canvas. Repositories, notes, links and tasks sit where you put them, so the relationship between two things is their distance on the map rather than the path you took to reach them. It runs as a Docker stack you host yourself, and the project’s own slogan is blunt about the problem it solves: your project is scattered across too many tools.

Key Features

• Spatial canvas — place blocks anywhere on an infinite board; what sits close together is related
• Live repository and issue embeds — pull GitHub, GitLab, Gitea and Forgejo repositories and issues directly onto the canvas
• Rich media — Markdown notes, rendered Mermaid diagrams, images, links and files in the same workspace
• Real-time collaboration — several people can work on the same board at once
• Time travel — browse historical snapshots of the workspace to trace why a decision was made
• Git versioning — sync a project canvas to a Git repository, with notes and structure stored as versioned files
• Self-hosted by design — the whole workspace lives on your own server, with PostgreSQL and a persistent storage volume
• One-click templates — deployment templates for Easypanel and RepoCloud set up the database and volume for you

Why Use Ideon?

Most project tools organise work in lists or folders, which loses the shape of how things relate. Ideon keeps that shape visible: a repository block next to the design notes it feeds, with the related issue tracker a short distance away. Because boards sync to Git, the map is not a private notebook — it can be reviewed, versioned and shared like the rest of a project. For developers who already jump between a forge, a notes app and a ticket tracker, it collapses three contexts into one screen.

Use Cases

• Mapping a codebase and its issues on a shared board at the start of a sprint
• Keeping design notes, reference links and repositories for a side project together
• Collaborative planning sessions where the board itself is the artefact
• Rebuilding the context behind past decisions using time-travel snapshots

Deployment and Requirements

• Runs with Docker and Docker Compose; the compose stack brings up the app and a PostgreSQL database
• Set at least SECRET_KEY in .env (generate with openssl rand -hex 32) plus any database credentials you want to change, then docker compose up -d
• Dashboard listens on port 3000 by default; data persists in the /app/storage volume
• One-click templates are available for Easypanel and RepoCloud

Licence

GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0) — free and open source. The AGPL’s network clause means that if you modify Ideon and let others use it over a network, you must offer them the modified source.

Alternatives

• AppFlowy — open-source workspace for notes, tasks and wikis
• Docmost — self-hosted collaborative wiki and documentation platform
• Excalidraw — open-source virtual whiteboard for sketching diagrams
• Plane — open-source project and issue tracking