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The Synkk Philosophy — The Sovereign PKM Manifesto

Thinking is personal. Keep it yours.

Obsidian is celebrated worldwide because it is local, durable, and free from corporate database silos. We built Synkk so teams, founders, and researchers can collaborate with the full power of Obsidian without surrendering data sovereignty to commercial cloud gatekeepers.

Explore the pillars Read our manifesto Tech comparison
  • 100% Plain Markdown (.md)
  • Zero Cloud Silos or Lock-In
  • Self-Hosted SQLite WAL Engine
  • Granular Path-Level ACLs
Sovereignty First
Synkk Dashboard Overview
Core Philosophy No Cloud Silos Plain .md files forever · AES-256-GCM · SQLite WAL
YOUR HARDWARE. YOUR INTELLECT.

01 / The Problem Space

Why existing sync solutions break down for teams.

Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) tools are magical for solo thinkers, but collaboration has historically forced a series of painful, risky compromises.

PARADIGM 01ALL-OR-NOTHING

The Cost & Privacy Dilemma of Proprietary Sync

Official Obsidian Sync is well-suited for solo individuals, but escalates to $48–$120 per user each year. Worst of all, it provides zero granular folder permissions: an employee or external contractor either gets access to your entire vault, or nothing at all.

Proprietary Sync

$120/seat/yr · All-or-Nothing vault access · Zero contractor folder scoping

Synkk Guarantee

Self-Hosted $0 or Lifetime License · Surgical Path ACLs (Read/Write, Read-Only, Hidden)

PARADIGM 02MERGE COLLISION

The Fragility of Community Git Plugins

Git-based sync plugins are notorious for silent merge conflicts. A single conflict marker (<<<<<<< HEAD) written into a Markdown file destroys frontmatter parsing, breaks Dataview queries, and causes severe mobile sync battery drain.

Git Sync Plugins

Cryptic conflict markers ruin YAML frontmatter · Silent merge failure · Heavy battery drain

Synkk Guarantee

Optimistic Concurrency Control · Zero silent overwrites · Visual 3-way diff reconciliation

PARADIGM 03SURRENDERED PRIVACY

The Data Exposure of Cloud Monoliths

Teams migrating to Notion or Confluence surrender data sovereignty. Company strategy, customer notes, and API keys are stored in multi-tenant commercial cloud databases vulnerable to vendor outages and third-party AI training scrapers.

Cloud SaaS Monoliths

Closed database schemas · Data scraped for AI training · Vulnerable to third-party outages

Synkk Guarantee

100% Plain Markdown on your disk · Zero third-party telemetry · Zero-Knowledge E2EE

PARADIGM 04STORAGE CRUNCH

The Mobile Storage Constraint

Team vaults with PDFs, audio recordings, and canvas boards easily exceed 50GB, quickly overwhelming mobile storage on iPhones and Android devices when traditional sync engines force full vault cloning.

Full Vault Cloning

50GB media libraries fill mobile storage · Long initial sync freezes device bandwidth

Synkk Guarantee

Selective Ghost Files: Markdown syncs instantly; heavy media hydrates on-demand

02 / The Five Pillars

The foundational principles behind Synkk.

Every line of code in Synkk is written to honor five unbreakable commitments to data sovereignty, safety, and team velocity.

Pillar 01 · Sovereignty

Local-First & 100% Sovereign.

Your notes remain plain Markdown files (.md) stored on your local disk. If Synkk is turned off tomorrow, every single file, folder, and link in your vault continues working in Obsidian exactly as before. The server runs on your own hardware, home server, or private VPS.

  • No proprietary database lock-in: Clean, standard Markdown files with standard YAML frontmatter.
  • Self-hosted autonomy: Run via Docker Compose or native PHP on your private server.
  • Zero external dependencies: Complete vault management without commercial cloud silos.
Local-First Markdown Workspace
Pillar 02 · Access Control

Team-Aware with Path-Scoped ACLs.

Collaborate selectively. Assign surgical per-path permissions across team members and contractors. Share public documentation or engineering RFCs with full write access, keep client deliverables read-only, and mark private logs or executive notes as completely hidden.

  • Read/Write: Full capability to push edits, create new notes, and sync revisions.
  • Read-Only: Clients pull and read notes; local write attempts are blocked at the API gateway.
  • Hidden: The file path is completely redacted from the sync manifest—untrusted devices have zero knowledge it exists.
Granular Path Permissions Matrix
Interactive ACL Simulator
Select an organization role to test real-time path boundaries:
Vault Folder Path Enforced Permission Obsidian Visibility
Pillar 03 · Safety

Safe & Deterministic. Zero Silent Loss.

Sync engines must never lose data. Synkk protects your team with the Atomic Safety Shield: an automatic guard that halts sync if a batch attempts to delete more than 10% of your notes. Combined with pre-sync local backups and an interactive 3-way visual conflict sandbox, your work is never overwritten.

  • Atomic 10% Deletion Threshold: Halts rogue deletion scripts with a cryptographic override.
  • Pre-Sync Snapshots: Files are backed up locally before remote overwrites take place.
  • 3-Way Visual Sandbox: Reconcile concurrent edits side-by-side with 1-click hunk merging.
🛡️ Atomic Safety Shield Zero silent overwrites
SHA-256
Cryptographic Verification

Content fingerprints on every accepted revision

SNAPSHOTS
Pre-Sync Backups

Local backup saved before remote mutations

3-WAY DIFF
Visual Sandbox

Reconcile concurrent changes without Git merge hell

Pillar 04 · Private Intelligence

Intelligent & Agentic on Your Hardware.

Turn your personal knowledge base into a private AI assistant. Synkk combines sublinear character TF-IDF vector embeddings and local Ollama LLMs with bidirectional wikilink graph traversal. Ask questions of your vault with verified line citations without leaking a single byte to third-party AI APIs.

  • Local Ollama Integration: Run Llama 3.2 or Nomic Embeddings directly on your machine.
  • Graph-Augmented RAG: Traverses backlink connections ([[wikilinks]]) for deep contextual answers.
  • Zero Cloud Leakage: 100% private intelligence operating strictly on your hardware.
Knowledge Graph and Private Local RAG
Pillar 05 · Cryptography

Zero-Knowledge Cryptography & Fleet DLP.

For organizations with strict compliance requirements, Synkk provides client-side AES-256-GCM encryption with PBKDF2 key derivation. The server stores strictly opaque ciphertext blobs. Leaked credentials (AWS keys, OpenAI tokens, private SSH keys) are caught in real time by the automated DLP scanner before they leave the device.

  • Client-Side AES-256-GCM: Keys are derived locally with 100,000 PBKDF2 iterations.
  • In-App DLP Secret Scanner: Intercepts high-entropy credential leaks automatically.
  • 1-Click Remote Device Wipe: Revoke compromised device tokens instantly (HTTP 410 purge).
security-telemetry.json 
{
  "vault_e2ee": "aes-256-gcm",
  "key_derivation": "pbkdf2_sha256_100k",
  "dlp_scanner": "active",
  "server_storage": "opaque_ciphertext",
  "remote_wipe_support": true,
  "zero_knowledge": true
}
🔒 Zero-Knowledge Verified Server admins cannot read note contents

03 / The Founding Manifesto

Why We Will Never Sell Your Thoughts.

“If software requires cloud servers you do not control to read your own thoughts, you do not own your mind — you are renting it from a landlord.”

In an era where every major tech company is training AI models on private user repositories, selling knowledge graphs to ad exchanges, and locking customers into closed proprietary database schemas, Synkk is a line in the sand. We believe personal and team knowledge is an extension of human cognition. It must be private, sovereign, and portable forever.

1. Plain Text Forever

No proprietary schemas, no opaque database blobs. You can delete Synkk at any second and your notes remain untouched on your hard drive.

2. Sustainable Independence

We sell software licenses and optional managed hosting. We will never take venture capital conditioned on monetizing user data or AI scrapers.

3. Strict Zero Telemetry

No Google Analytics, no Mixpanel, no behavioral fingerprinting in the sync engine. What happens in your vault stays strictly in your vault.

SK
The Synkk Core Team Independent Maintainers & PKM Crafters
Inspect Our Source Code on GitHub

04 / Decisive Architecture

How Synkk Compares to Alternative Solutions.

Compare the engineering guarantees of Synkk against Official Obsidian Sync, Community Git Plugins, and Closed Cloud SaaS.

Architectural Capability ⚡ Synkk Sovereign Official Obsidian Sync Community Git Plugins Cloud SaaS (Notion / Confluence)
File Format & Portability ✓ Plain .md on your disk ✓ Plain .md on your disk ✓ Plain .md on your disk ✗ Closed proprietary cloud DB
Granular Folder/Path ACLs ✓ Surgical Path ACLs ✗ All-or-Nothing Vault ✗ All-or-Nothing Repo ~ Complex Workspace ACLs
In-Flight DLP Secret Scanner ✓ Intercepts AWS / API keys ✗ None ✗ None (Committed to Git) ✗ Scanned for AI Training
Merge Conflict Safety ✓ 3-Way Visual Diff Sandbox ~ Duplicate conflict copies ✗ Destructive Git markers ✗ Last-write-wins overwrites
Selective Mobile Ghost Storage ✓ Hydrates media on demand ✗ Full vault cloning only ✗ Full repo clone (Large size) ~ Cloud streaming
Local Private RAG & AI Graph ✓ Local Ollama + Embeddings ✗ None ✗ None ✗ Third-party cloud LLMs
Self-Hosted Infrastructure ✓ 1-Click Docker / Compose ✗ Closed Obsidian Cloud ~ Requires GitHub / GitLab ✗ Closed Multi-Tenant SaaS
Cost & Licensing Model ✓ Free CE or Lifetime Deal $48–$120 / seat / year Free (Complex setup) $96–$240 / seat / year

05 / Engineering Blueprint

Built upon a battle-tested, decoupled stack.

Synkk is designed as two tightly synchronized halves: the high-concurrency Core Server and the native Obsidian client plugin.

CORE SERVERPHP 8.5 / LARAVEL 12

High-Throughput Sync API & Web Workspace

Powered by Laravel 12 on PHP 8.5 with high-concurrency SQLite WAL engine. Delivers sub-15ms sync responses, atomic cache locks for multiplayer carets, and soft-delete tombstone tracking.

STORAGE ENGINE SQLite WAL / Postgres 15+ Single-command Docker container
NATIVE PLUGINTYPESCRIPT / CM6

Obsidian ViewPlugin & Live Decorators

Written in TypeScript with CodeMirror 6 ViewPlugins. Injects live presence carets, handles pre-sync backups, renders the visual 3-way diff sandbox, and supports instant 2-second QR pairing.

Plugin Releasev1.0.0 Public

Pairing Latency< 2.0s via QR

Diff Engine3-Way Sandbox

COMMUNITY & OPEN COREGPL / COMMERCIAL

Sustainable Open Source Innovation

Synkk Community is 100% free and open-source forever. Commercial Pro licenses and managed cloud workspaces fund continuous research without investor pressure to commercialize private data.

  1. Free Community CESelf-hosted, full source
  2. Pro Lifetime DealCommercial team server
  3. Managed Cloud SaaSZero-maintenance hosting
Cryptographic Sync Pipeline (Step-by-Step Flow)
01 · CLIENT EDIT Obsidian Event Trigger

File modification detected locally; pre-sync snapshot archived to .synkk/snapshots/.

02 · CRYPTO TRANSIT SHA-256 Fingerprint

Content hashed and encrypted via client-side AES-256-GCM before transport dispatch.

03 · DLP GATEWAY In-Flight Secret Inspection

Regex scanner checks for leaked tokens (AWS, GitHub, Slack) to prevent credential propagation.

04 · OCC VERIFICATION Atomic WAL Ingestion

Server executes lockForUpdate(); checks baseVersion. Rejects overwrites; creates conflict files.

05 · VERSION ARCHIVE Historical Retention

Prior version archived into VaultFileVersion for 1-click historical rollback anytime.

Join The Sovereign Sync Movement · v1.0.0 Live

Your thoughts. Your rules.

Own your team brain today.

Deploy your private Synkk server with Docker in 30 seconds, install the open-source Obsidian plugin, and experience team collaboration without cloud compromise.

Download Plugin v1.0.0 Read Documentation
100% Plain Markdown Zero Telemetry Self-Hosted Docker Free Forever CE
synkk-sovereign-deploy.sh
$ git clone https://github.com/tawandajosephmutsena/synkk.git
$ docker compose up -d
Synkk sovereign server running at http://127.0.0.1:8080
# Scan dashboard QR code in Obsidian mobile to pair in 2 seconds
$ curl -X GET http://127.0.0.1:8080/api/v1/auth/verify
{"status": "authenticated", "mode": "sovereign", "e2ee": true}