Your team wiki is a Google Doc named "FINAL runbook v3 (copy) (1)." Someone's editing deployment steps while another person rewrites the same paragraph in Notion because they couldn't find the doc. Comments pile up. Version history is a archaeology dig. And the whole thing lives in a US SaaS account your client asked you not to use for their infrastructure docs.
Docs (La Suite Docs) is the open-source pushback. ~17k GitHub stars, MIT-licensed, built by France's DINUM and Germany's ZenDiS — a collaborative editor for wikis and documentation with live cursors, comments, subpages, and real-time sync. Notion-shaped, self-hostable, Django and React under the hood.
What it actually does
Docs is a team knowledge platform — structured documents, hierarchy, and multiplayer editing — not a personal scratch pad.
Real-time collaboration. Powered by Yjs and HocusPocus — see who's editing, live cursors, concurrent changes without the "someone overwrote my section" panic. Built on ProseMirror and BlockNote for rich text and block-based editing.
Wiki structure. Subpages and hierarchy so runbooks, onboarding guides, and client docs nest logically. Search across content. Slash commands and blocks for fast formatting — Markdown-friendly when you want it.
Sharing and access control. Granular permissions on documents and spaces. Comments for review workflows. Export to DOCX, ODT, PDF, and Markdown; import from DOCX and MD.
Offline editing. Keep working when the connection hiccups — sync catches up when you're back online.
Optional AI helpers. Rewrite, summarize, translate, fix typos — disabled by default, wired to your own OpenAI-compatible endpoint when you enable it. Client content stays on your LLM routing, not baked-in vendor keys.
Public sector pedigree. Born from European government digital initiatives — designed for organizations that care about sovereignty, accessibility, and long-term maintainability, not just startup MVP wikis.
Docs vs Trilium vs Memos
We've covered other note tools:
- Trilium / SiYuan — personal knowledge bases with trees, clones, or block links
- Memos — quick capture timeline, minimal structure
La Suite Docs targets teams. Google Docs/Notion energy — shared spaces, live collaboration, org-wide documentation — not a solo second brain. Pick Trilium for personal PKM; pick Docs when five people need to edit the same client playbook simultaneously.
Compared to DeepWiki-Open: DeepWiki auto-generates wikis from git repos. Docs is where humans write and maintain docs deliberately — onboarding guides, SOPs, policies — with full editorial control.
Why self-host?
Operational docs are confidential. Runbooks contain internal URLs, credentials-adjacent procedures, client architecture details. Self-hosted on a Canadian VPS beats Notion's US infrastructure when contracts mention data location.
OIDC under your control. Docs authenticates via OpenID Connect — wire Keycloak, Authentik, or your existing IdP. One login story across your self-hosted stack.
MIT license (with a nuance). Core Docs is MIT — private companies can use, sell services around it, contribute back. PDF export via BlockNote XL packages is GPL and optional; build with PUBLISH_AS_MIT=true if you need a strictly MIT image without those features.
No per-seat wiki tax. Compose or Kubernetes on hardware you already pay for — sensible for agencies with dozens of staff editing client documentation daily.
What running it takes
Docs is not a single-container app. Production stack includes:
- PostgreSQL — primary database
- Redis — caching
- S3-compatible object storage (MinIO works) — media and files
- OIDC identity provider (Keycloak example in the repo)
- Y-provider service — WebSocket collaboration backend
Docker Compose is documented but marked experimental — Kubernetes is what maintainers run in production. Expect to spend an afternoon on env files in env.d/, SMTP for invitations, and TLS on your domain.
mkdir -p docs/env.d && cd docs
curl -o compose.yaml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/suitenumerique/docs/main/docs/examples/compose/compose.yaml
# Configure env.d/common, backend, postgresql, yprovider — OIDC, S3, secrets
docker compose up -d
docker compose run --rm backend python manage.py migrate
docker compose run --rm backend python manage.py createsuperuserPin image tags instead of latest before you go live. Community installs exist for YunoHost and Nix if you prefer those paths.
Who it's for (and who should skip it)
Good fit: agencies maintaining client runbooks and internal SOPs, dev teams wanting a self-hosted Notion, public-sector orgs aligned with European open-source initiatives, Canadian teams needing OIDC + Canadian hosting for collaborative docs.
Maybe skip it: solo note-taking — Trilium or Memos is lighter. You won't run PostgreSQL, Redis, S3, and an IdP — the dependency count is real. You need git-generated docs only — DeepWiki-Open or README files might suffice.
Hosting it in Canada
Docs wants a proper stack, not a toy VPS. We deploy La Suite Docs on Canadian Docker hosting with MinIO or compatible storage, PostgreSQL backups, and TLS — or help you plan a Kubernetes path if that's your production target.
Tell us your team size and IdP setup — we'll map the compose requirements before you migrate fifty Notion pages.
