Developer sianachi has released Nixsites, a self-hosted workspace that collapses notes, tasks, habits, and AI chats into a single hierarchical item tree. Designed for individuals and small teams, the platform prioritizes data sovereignty by ensuring everything remains exportable and local-first. The project is currently live on GitHub, attracting early attention from the Hacker News community with a focus on infrastructure simplicity and unified data models.

One Tree, Many Views

The core architecture separates the data bodyβ€”whether a note, canvas, or spreadsheetβ€”from its presentation layer. Users can render the same underlying structure as a list, board, calendar, timeline, gallery, or finance ledger without duplicating data. This flexible view system allows for property schemas, formulas, and rollups, while an AI companion builds structure on request, always previewing plans before execution to prevent unexpected changes.

Technical Stack and Real-Time Sync

Nixsites leverages a modern stack including ASP.NET Core 10, Postgres 16 with pgvector for AI features, and React 19. Real-time collaboration is handled by a Node 22 service using CRDTs over WebSockets, supporting presence and version history. Security is enforced at the database level via Postgres row-level security, ensuring that the web app, CLI, and MCP server all share a single authorization path, which simplifies the security model for self-hosters.

AI Integration and Export Options

The workspace includes a CLI tool, nixctl, which exposes the data to AI tools via an MCP server, allowing for scriptable and AI-assisted workflows. To prevent vendor lock-in, the system supports lossless .nix archives alongside standard PDF, DOCX, and Markdown exports. It also imports from Markdown, DOCX, PDF, and Obsidian, making it a viable option for users migrating from existing knowledge management systems.

Key Takeaways

  • Unified data model treats notes, tasks, and files as items in a single tree.
  • Built on ASP.NET Core 10, Postgres 16, and React 19 with CRDT-based real-time sync.
  • AI companion and MCP server enable scriptable, AI-assisted workspace management.
  • Strong export/import support for Markdown, DOCX, PDF, and Obsidian prevents lock-in.

The Bottom Line

For builders who are tired of fragmented tools, Nixsites offers a compelling, technically sound alternative. The decision to unify data types under a single tree with robust export options is a smart move for long-term data ownership.