Recently, we decided to open source it, as we believe others might benefit from a lightweight, customizable documentation system like this. We're excited to see how the community can take it further, contribute, and adapt it to their own needs!
* On the GUI side, it leans heavily towards TinaCMS. We even considered using TinaCMS directly (Tinasaurus (https://github.com/tinacms/tinasaurus)) but ultimately built our own for better integration with our backend.
* For the backend (MDX -> HTML) generation, it's very similar to Docusaurus. We use a tool called RsPress, which is part of the RsBuild/RsPack tool suite. It's relatively new, but because it's written in Rust, it's much faster than Docusaurus. (Fun fact, if you look at the commit history you will see that we initially used Docusaurus but then migrated away from it!)
* Wiki.js is extremely extensive, but it’s dropping support for SQLite, which was a big factor for us. Also, its frontend for documentation doesn’t feel as fast as RsPress (you can try ours out on kalmia.difuse.io it's hosted on single core azure server). The biggest reason we didn’t go with Wiki.js was the versioning system—it felt clunky (or non existent for entire docs?). In Kalmia, versioning the entire documentation is just a one-click process.
So, in short, Kalmia combines a TinaCMS-like editing experience with Docusaurus-like static site generation, but with speed advantages from the latest Rust based tooling for SSG.
One major difference between Outline and Kalmia is the license. I believe Outline uses BSL, while Kalmia is AGPL.
Would be happy to switch to a self-hosted FOSS alternative though.
They, too, focus on the collaborative, 'similar-to-git-workflow', and versioned approach towards documentation.
Happy to see variety in the 'docs' tools area, and really appreciate it being FOSS. Looking forward to trying out Kalmia on some project soon.
I couldn't find a roadmap for the project but I would suggest to implement some sort of SSO. At work it was so much easier to justify bringing in a new tool like https://www.getoutline.com/ where we could use OIDC to integrate with Gitlab user management.
Think of Kalmia as similar to Docusaurus, but with a built-in GUI—one of the most requested features from the Docusaurus community (https://docusaurus.io/feature-requests/p/make-content-editin...). With Kalmia, non-technical users can contribute to documentation without needing to know Git or Markdown, making content editing much easier.
We store the documentation data in a database (Postgres or SQLite), and markdown/HTML is generated only when updates, deletions, or creations happen. The built HTML is stored in memory for fast access, ensuring performance remains smooth even for large docs.
We’re also working on features like export to zip and GitHub Pages support, so users can host their docs externally if needed.
Regarding SSO, it’s a great suggestion. We’re looking into integrating Single Sign-On (SSO) to streamline user management and improve security. This will help with easier adoption in environments that already use OIDC for authentication. (We already supported OAuth with Github/Microsoft/Google)
Thanks again for your thoughtful input, and I appreciate you checking out Kalmia!
Source: https://rspress.dev/guide/start/introduction#build-performan...
Anecdotally, for large or extra large sites, the build performance gap between even Eleventy and Hugo can be quite large. And the gap from either of those to the newer JavaScript tools like Next.js is enormous.
Is this Chakra UI? The notification that shows up and bounces a bit, I've seen that on other websites too.
Are there any that just work with markdown and git repos?
We’re currently developing a feature that allows you to push directly to Git from Kalmia. Instead of pushing Markdown, we’ll push the compiled HTML/JS output, eliminating the need for a build step in the Git repo and making CI/CD processes unnecessary.
It's a pretty easily solvable problem but I guess developers are focussing on bigger markets.
I'd want to keep the build step since I may pull markdown from other sources like I think astra allows.
I really just want to be able to give access to a marketing team to update the blog etc as a nice UI over using markdown and git (which is never going to happen).
While it does limit deployment to platforms like GitHub Pages, Kalmia is designed for teams that need more than just static documentation—think of it as a middle ground between static site generators and fully dynamic CMS solutions. For purely static sites, there are other great options out there, but Kalmia focuses on more interactive, collaborative documentation.
That said, we’re actually interested in providing an option for users to export and deploy it to platforms like GitHub Pages or similar, so stay tuned for future updates on that!
