mdwiki

Simple, self-contained markdown wiki written in Go. Single binary, no database, no user accounts.

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Why?

I built mdwiki to document my homelab while learning Linux, server, and network administration. I wanted something really simple and barebone - just markdown files on disk, no databases, no auth. Most wikis out there were way too heavy for what I needed.

It also doubled as a fun side project to work with Go and React, two technologies I enjoy. And honestly, building the wiki was a great form of procrastination.

Features

• Single binary deployment (frontend embedded in Go binary)
• Pages stored as plain markdown files
• Page versioning (every save creates a new version)
• Trash with restore support
• Fuzzy search (instant results in navbar dropdown as you type)
• React SPA frontend with Tailwind CSS

Tech Stack

• Backend: Go, Echo framework, embed for static assets
• Frontend: React, TypeScript, Vite, Tailwind CSS
• Storage: Plain markdown files on disk

How to Build

Requires Go 1.16+ and Node.js.

make

This will install frontend dependencies, build the React SPA, and compile the Go binary with the frontend embedded.

Development

make dev

This starts both the Vite dev server (with hot reload) and the Go backend (with air for hot reload). Air is installed automatically if not present.

Open the Vite dev server address (default http://localhost:5173) in your browser. API requests are proxied to the Go backend automatically.

Production

make
./mdwiki

The built binary serves everything — open the Go backend address (default http://localhost:8080, configured in config.yml).

Other targets:

make clean          # Remove build artifacts
make test           # Run Go tests
make dev-frontend   # Run Vite dev server only
make dev-backend    # Run Go server with air only

Configuration

Application loads config.yml on startup.

host: localhost
port: 8080
storage: .storage

• host & port - web server bind address
• storage - directory where pages are stored

Running as systemd Service

Service file example

[Unit]
Description=mdwiki
After=network.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Restart=always
Type=simple
WorkingDirectory=/opt
ExecStart=/opt/mdwiki

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

• Update ExecStart and WorkingDirectory based on installation path
• Working directory must contain config.yml
• Place the file in /etc/systemd/system/mdwiki.service

Running the service

• Start: systemctl start mdwiki
• Stop: systemctl stop mdwiki
• Status: systemctl status mdwiki
• Enable on boot: systemctl enable mdwiki