Hey selfhosters 👋
A few weeks ago I shared Ideon here and got great feedback that shaped a lot of what I’ve been working on since.
Since my last post here, Ideon crossed 200 stars on GitHub and I wanted to say thank you ❤. It means a lot to see people interested in what started as a side project. It motivated me to work on it literally every day since then.
For those who missed it: Ideon is a self-hosted visual workspace where you lay out everything about a project on an infinite canvas: notes, Git repos, code snippets, checklists, sketches, links and connect them together. Two containers, no external dependencies.
Since then, a lot has changed and I wanted to share an update.
Self-hosting got smoother. Docker permission issues with bind mounts are gone, build times are faster, and there’s a new GIT_ALLOWED_HOSTS env variable so you can whitelist your internal Git servers (Gitea, Forgejo, GitLab behind a VPN, etc.) without the SSRF filter blocking them.
Collaboration got real structure. There are now 4 project roles (Creator, Owner, Editor, Viewer), a Request Access workflow for private projects, and the canvas supports real-time multiplayer with conflict-free editing.
The canvas got a lot more usable. Keyboard navigation (arrow keys + vim keys), a command palette, freehand sketch blocks, drag-and-drop checklists with progress bars, markdown tables and task lists, emoji reactions on blocks, edge labels, and a bunch of stability fixes for large projects.
Where this is going next:
Right now Ideon lets you see your project. Git stats, issues, PRs show up on the canvas, but you can only look at them. For the v1 I want to move from visibility to control. Merge a PR from the canvas. Trigger a deployment. Restart a service. Turn the workspace into an actual cockpit where you operate your project, not just view it.
That’s the direction. Curious what this community thinks about it.
If you tried it and hit something rough, or if you’ve been waiting to try it, now’s a good time. Feedback always welcome.
Maybe I’m blind, but is there a docker composed YAML?
Would like to reverse proxy this into my VPS.
of course, there is better, i made an installer that does everything for you, downloads the yaml, the env.example creates secrets, prompts for hostname, port, etc. and finally starts the containers, of course you still have the choice to say no at every step, or edit the .env manually, everything is in the repo (I tried to post it here but seems to be blocked by lemmy’s firewall :-/ )
This is a neat project. You should consider moving this to Codeberg, though. Github is a serious risk for FOSS projects.
Thank you, I am not aware of the risk with GitHub, can you tell me more?
There’s many good articles out there if you have the time. It boils down to stolen code, forced identification and enshittification.
https://sfconservancy.org/GiveUpGitHub/
https://laoutaris.org/blog/codeberg/
https://blog.joergi.io/posts/2025-09-20-migrate-from-github-to-codeberg/
You’re awesome !
No, I said I wasn’t playing with my server this weekend. I promised my wife. She’ll get pissed.
I guess I’m getting a divorce 🤣
Edit: 2 things
1.- that demo looks awesome. Thank you so much.
2.- can you suggest an easy way to migrate all my Obsidian data to Ideon please? Otherwise, I’m looking at a few (using the word ‘few’ very lightly here) hours of copy/paste.
Okay, I’m not taking responsibility for any divorces caused by Ideon 😹
Really glad you liked the demo though, that means a lot. I honestly didn’t expect people to seriously consider moving their whole setup.
For Obsidian migration, yes, I can absolutely make it happen. But I want to be transparent, it’ll take a bit of time to build something clean and reliable :)
Take your time. It’s by no means a deal breaker. I’m sucked into self-hosting deep enough that I can keep what’s in Obsidian right now while using Ideon, and just wait until I can move it to Ideon. It wouldn’t be the first time I have 2 services running in parallel until I figure out which one I’m keeping. Hell, I did that for almost a year when I was in Joplin and then decided to move to Obsidian.
As for the divorce, I don’t think it’s going to happen any time soon. She wanted to catch-up on Solo Leveling, so I joined her. I’ll spin up the server tomorrow when she leaves for work 🤣
The demo is sweet bro. Seriously, looks good. I’m going to have to check this out.
Wait… there’s no LLM/AI nonsensical utter bloody-void horrible mess?
My gracious holy smokes… THANK YOU!!! Thank you… from the very depths of my heart… and soul… for making something that is actually important… that is for human…Thank you, dear @expyth0n@lemmy.world for the marvel… art… you do…
There’s still belief in effort, education, human, art… in the purpose…
This is honestly one of the kindest messages I’ve received. THANKS ❤.
I’m just tired of seeing every project full of soulless AI slop for fame.
I try to build things with intention, even if it’s not the “trend”, I prefer to stay aligned with what suits me :)
This looks incredible! Kind of bummed I didn’t notice this when you shared it last time, as I’ve been trying to found essentially literally this.
I’m also on agreement with everyone else, ius refreshing to see something non-AI
Very interesting, forwarding this to several groups who seem stuck with Miro boards.
Thanks 🙌, appreciate it !
Already selfhosting it. Thank you so much for your time and effort <3
YAY ! The goat 😆
Refreshingly not an ai made thing…
Nothing bad about using ai but
Yes, of course, but I just think that when you make something and especially invite people to use it, you have to at least know what you’re doing, cuz I see a lot of people who promote open source, who want to contribute and so on, saying it’s free stuff, that’s okay, But throw something with AI, you don’t even know WTH you’re doing and you ask people to install your thing ? That’s where I really lose it tbh.
I am with you my friend, all the way
I just wanted to try the demo linked on your Github and I couldn’t login with the provided username and password even though I copy and pasted them.
how ? I just tried right now and it works, do you get an error or sum ?
Now it worked for me too. I don’t know, it told me that the username or password is wrong.
#GoodFirstIssue 😹
Looks quite impressive!
Not sure if useful for me though.
Thanks, there’s a demo if you want to try, just in case
