cabinet
/ˈkab.ɪ.nət/noun
- 1.
A cupboard with shelves or drawers for storing or displaying items.
“a filing cabinet”
- 2.
politicsThe committee of senior ministers responsible for controlling government policy.
“a cabinet meeting”
- 3.
softwareAn AI-first knowledge base where files live on disk and a team of AI agents helps you execute.
“I asked my cabinet to research the market and draft the blog post”
origin — mid 16th century: from cabinet, diminutive of Old French cabine.
definition 3— 2026, open source.
Your knowledge base.
Your AI team.
A free and open-source AI-first startup OS where everything lives as markdown files on disk. No database. No vendor lock-in.
No subscription. No trial. No paywall. Clone it, run it, and make it your own.
|
Real Use Cases
How people actually use Cabinet
Knowledge base + agents + files. One OS for wildly different workflows.
Solo Founder
Strategy, roadmap, market — one place.
“I run my entire startup from here. Strategy in /strategy/, roadmap in /product/roadmap.md, ICP in /market/icp.md. My CEO agent attends every planning session — I open a page, describe the week, and it challenges my assumptions and updates the mission board.”
Activity — last 24h
Agents
Files
Indie App Founder
My app runs itself while I sleep
“I use it to run my B2C app. The App Store listing is a markdown page I can update any time. I have an hourly Reddit scout that surfaces user complaints, and a weekly competitor job that crawls the market and dumps everything into /market/competitors/. I wake up to a briefing.”
Activity — last 24h
Agents
Files
Small Business Owner
2,000 leads. One army of agents.
“I have a CSV of leads. My agents read it, research each company, and draft personalised outreach. The pipeline CSV updates in real time — I watch it fill up from my dashboard. It's like having a sales team that never sleeps and never asks for a raise.”
Activity — last 24h
Agents
Files
Solo Creator
Monday morning. Newsletter writes itself.
“Every Monday my Trend Scout scans HN and Reddit, picks the top signals, and my Draft Writer assembles the issue. I open Cabinet, read the draft, make a few edits, and hit send. What used to take 3 hours now takes 10 minutes.”
Activity — last 24h
Agents
Files
Freelance Consultant
Every client. One brain.
“Each client gets their own folder. Meeting notes, proposals, deliverables — all markdown. When I switch clients, I just ask the AI about the folder. It has full context: the history, the decisions, the open questions. No re-reading, no catch-up.”
Activity — last 24h
Agents
Files
OSS Maintainer
Merge PR. Changelog writes itself.
“I linked my GitHub repo with .repo.yaml. When I merge a PR, an agent reads the diff, updates CHANGELOG.md, drafts release notes, and queues a Discord announcement. Maintenance overhead dropped to almost zero.”
Activity — last 24h
Agents
Files
Solo Founder
Strategy, roadmap, market — one place.
“I run my entire startup from here. Strategy in /strategy/, roadmap in /product/roadmap.md, ICP in /market/icp.md. My CEO agent attends every planning session — I open a page, describe the week, and it challenges my assumptions and updates the mission board.”
Activity — last 24h
Agents
Files
Indie App Founder
My app runs itself while I sleep
“I use it to run my B2C app. The App Store listing is a markdown page I can update any time. I have an hourly Reddit scout that surfaces user complaints, and a weekly competitor job that crawls the market and dumps everything into /market/competitors/. I wake up to a briefing.”
Activity — last 24h
Agents
Files
Install Flow
See Cabinet start up in the terminal
The install walkthrough is back. One command scaffolds the workspace, sets up your AI team, and gets Cabinet running locally.
The Problem
Your AI agents have no memory
Every time you start a new Claude session, it forgets everything. Your project context, your decisions, your research — gone. You keep re-explaining the same things. Cabinet gives your AI a persistent brain: a knowledge base that both you and your agents read and write to, 24/7.
Without Cabinet
Scattered docs in Notion. AI sessions that forget context. Manual copy-paste between tools. Scripts held together with tape.
With Cabinet
One knowledge base. AI agents that remember everything. Scheduled jobs that compound. Your team grows while you sleep.
Design Principle
If it feels like enterprise workflow software, it's wrong. If it feels like watching a team work, it's right.
Unique to Cabinet
Ship HTML apps inside
your knowledge base
This is the biggest difference between Cabinet and tools like Obsidian or Notion. Drop an index.html into any folder and it renders as a live, interactive app.
- Full-screen mode: add a
.appmarker — sidebar and AI panel auto-collapse - AI-generated apps: ask Claude to build a dashboard, it writes the HTML directly into your KB
- Version controlled: every change is tracked in git, same as your markdown pages
- No build step: plain HTML/CSS/JS. Works with React, Vue, or vanilla
Features
Everything you need. Nothing you don't.
A complete operating system for your startup — knowledge base, AI agents, task management, and team chat in one self-hosted app.
WYSIWYG + Markdown
Rich text editing with Tiptap. Tables, code blocks, slash commands. Toggle to raw markdown anytime.
AI Agents
Onboard a CEO, Editor, Marketer. Each has goals, skills, scheduled jobs. Watch them work like a real team.
Embedded HTML Apps
Drop an index.html in any folder — it renders as an iframe. Full-screen mode for dashboards and tools.
Web Terminal
Full Claude Code terminal in the browser. xterm.js + node-pty. Run commands without leaving Cabinet.
File-Based Everything
No database. Markdown on disk. Drag-and-drop tree sidebar. Your data is always yours, always portable.
Git-Backed History
Every save auto-commits. Full diff viewer. Restore any page to any point in time. Linked repo support.
Scheduled Jobs
Cron-based agent automation. Reddit scout every 6 hours. Weekly reports on Monday. Your AI team never sleeps.
Missions & Tasks
Break goals into missions. Assign tasks to agents. Track progress with Kanban boards and progress bars.
Internal Chat
Built-in team channels. Agents and humans communicate. @mention an agent to trigger a response.
Full-Text Search
Cmd+K instant search across all pages. Fuzzy matching. FlexSearch index rebuilt on every change.
PDF & CSV First-Class
PDFs render inline. CSVs open as editable tables with add/delete rows and columns. Auto-save with git commit.
Linked Git Repos
Add .repo.yaml to link KB directories to source code repos. AI agents read and reference your codebase.
The Shift
Why the world needs Cabinet
Andrej Karpathy recently described the future of knowledge work. Cabinet is that future, built today.
Andrej Karpathy
LLM Knowledge Bases
“Using LLMs to build personal knowledge bases for various topics of research interest. A large fraction of my recent token throughput is going less into manipulating code, and more into manipulating knowledge.”
“Raw data from a given number of sources is collected, then compiled by an LLM into a .md wiki, then operated on by various CLIs by the LLM to do Q&A and to incrementally enhance the wiki.”
“I think there is room here for an incredible new product instead of a hacky collection of scripts.”
Karpathy: Index source docs into raw/, LLM compiles a wiki of .md files
Drag PDFs, CSVs, HTML apps, markdown into the KB. AI agents auto-organize and cross-link.
Karpathy: Uses Obsidian as the frontend to view compiled wiki
Built-in WYSIWYG editor, PDF viewer, CSV editor, embedded HTML apps, web terminal - all in one UI.
Karpathy: Once wiki is big enough, ask LLM complex questions against it
AI panel with @mentions. Agents reference the entire KB. Ask questions, get answers with page citations.
Karpathy: Render markdown, slide shows, matplotlib images back into Obsidian
Agents write directly to the KB. Slides, dashboards, reports - all viewable inline. Output compounds.
Karpathy: Manually runs LLM health checks, vibe-coded a search engine
Scheduled cron jobs, agent heartbeats, mission boards. Your AI team runs 24/7 without scripts.
Comparison
Not another note-taking app
Obsidian is a markdown editor. Notion is a team wiki. Paperclip orchestrates agents. Cabinet is the only tool that combines a knowledge base, AI agents, and embedded apps in one self-hosted OS.
| Feature | Cabinet | Obsidian | Notion | Paperclip |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Knowledge base / wiki | ||||
| Markdown files on disk | ||||
| Self-hosted / local-first | ||||
| AI agent orchestration | ||||
| Agent org chart / hierarchy | ||||
| Agent heartbeats / scheduling | ||||
| Agent budget controls | ||||
| Embedded HTML apps | ||||
| Web terminal (xterm.js) | ||||
| WYSIWYG editor | ||||
| PDF / CSV viewing & editing | ||||
| Git-backed version history | ||||
| Internal team chat | ||||
| Mission / task system | ||||
| Linked Git repos | ||||
| Audit logs | ||||
| No database required |
vs Obsidian
Obsidian is a great markdown editor with plugins. But it has no AI agents, no scheduled jobs, no embedded HTML apps, no web terminal. Cabinet is a knowledge OS, not just a note editor.
vs Notion
Notion locks your data in their cloud. Cabinet stores everything as markdown files on disk. You own your data. You can grep it. AI agents read and write directly. No API limits. No lock-in.
vs Paperclip
Paperclip is excellent at agent orchestration — org charts, budgets, audit logs. But it has no knowledge base, no editor, no content layer. Cabinet gives your agents a brain to read and write to, plus HTML apps, a terminal, and a full wiki.
AI Team
Hire your AI team in 5 questions
Answer 5 questions. A CEO agent appears. It suggests teammates. Each agent has goals, skills, and recurring jobs. You watch them work like watching a real team.
CEO Agent
Lead
Strategic planning, goal tracking, task delegation. Creates missions, coordinates the team.
Editor
Specialist
KB content editing, formatting, linking. Maintains documentation quality.
Content Marketer
Specialist
Blog posts, social media, newsletters. SEO-optimized content generation.
SEO Specialist
Specialist
Keyword research, site optimization, ranking analysis.
Sales Agent
Specialist
Lead generation, outreach, pipeline tracking.
QA Agent
Specialist
Review, proofread, fact-check content across the KB.
How It Works
From zero to AI team in 2 minutes
Install & Run
One command. Next.js + daemon start. Your knowledge base is a /data directory on disk.
npx cabinetai runAnswer 5 Questions
What's your company? What do you do? What are your goals? Cabinet builds your custom AI team.
Watch Your Team Work
Agents create missions, write content, scout Reddit, review quality — all on schedule.
Knowledge Compounds
Every agent run, every edit, every research session adds to the KB. Your system gets smarter every day.
Ready to build your AI team?
Cabinet is a free, open-source project you can run yourself. No subscription, no trial clock, and no vendor lock-in. Start in 2 minutes.
Questions? hi@runcabinet.com