🩺 Vitals
- 📦 Version: 1.8.4 (Released 2026-01-27)
- 🚀 Velocity: Active (Last commit 2026-01-27)
- 🌟 Community: 9.3k Stars · 652 Forks
- 🐞 Backlog: 329 Open Issues
🏗️ Profile
- Official: blinko.space
- Source: github.com/blinkospace/blinko
- License: GPL-3.0
- Deployment: Docker, SaaS
- Data Model: Postgres + pgvector
- Jurisdiction: China 🇨🇳
- Compliance: Not specified (Self-hosted)
- Complexity: Low (2/5) - Standard Docker Stack
- Maintenance: Low (2/5) - Primarily Database Backups
- Enterprise Ready: Moderate (3/5) - Privacy-first, SSO requires setup
1. The Executive Summary
What is it? Blinko is an open-source, AI-first note-taking application designed to serve as a "Second Brain." It prioritizes fast capture and intelligent retrieval using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). By self-hosting Blinko, users gain the benefits of associative AI recall (similar to Mem.ai) while maintaining absolute ownership of their data and AI indexes.
The Strategic Verdict:
- 🔴 For Collaborative Teams: Caution. Blinko is currently optimized for personal knowledge management (PKM). Enterprise-wide collaborative editing and permissions are still evolving.
- 🟢 For Sensitive IP: Strong Buy. Ideal for executives, researchers, and developers who need AI to help recall complex notes without exposing trade secrets to proprietary LLM training sets.
2. The "Hidden" Costs (TCO Analysis)
| Cost Component | Proprietary (Mem.ai) | Blinko (Open Source) |
|---|---|---|
| Data Privacy | High Risk (Cloud Hosted) | Zero Risk (Self-Hosted) |
| Subscription | ~$10-15/user/mo | $0 (GPL-3.0) |
| AI Processing | Included | Variable (Local LLM or API Keys) |
3. The "Day 2" Reality Check
🚀 Deployment & Operations
- Installation: Deployment is highly efficient via Docker. The stack requires a PostgreSQL instance with the
pgvectorextension, which is provided in the defaultdocker-composeconfiguration. - Updates: The project is in active development with a high commit velocity. Native clients for Desktop (Tauri) and Mobile (PWA/Android) provide a consistent experience across devices.
🛡️ Security & Governance
- Data Sovereignty: Full control. Your knowledge base, including the vector embeddings, remains on your infrastructure. This is critical for organizations with strict "no-cloud" AI policies.
- Access Control: Supports standard authentication. For enterprise environments, it can be shielded behind a VPN or Zero Trust proxy (like Tailscale or Cloudflare Tunnels).
4. Market Landscape
🏢 Proprietary Incumbents
- Mem.ai: The functional inspiration. Excellent UX but entirely closed-source and cloud-dependent.
- Notion: Versatile for teams, but AI features often require additional subscriptions and data sharing.
🤝 Open Source Ecosystem
- AppFlowy: A robust, Rust-based workspace. While AppFlowy offers a broader feature set (databases, boards), Blinko is more focused on fast AI-assisted recall.
- Logseq: A powerful local-first outliner. Lacks the integrated AI/RAG-first focus that Blinko provides out of the box.