Docs
suitenumerique · Documents
GitHub stars
16,957Awaiting first sync
No measured star history yet
What is Docs?
Docs is a shared editor where a team can write, organise and discuss documents in real time. It began as a joint project of the French and German governments, for organisations that want to keep control of their data. Organisations can run it on their own servers and connect it to their existing login system.
Docs is an open-source collaborative editor from La Suite numérique, led by the French and German governments. Teams write together in real time with live cursors, comments and a block editor with slash commands, and organise pages into nested sub-documents. It supports Markdown, granular access control, version history and optional AI writing helpers.
Core capabilities
- Real-time editing with live cursors, presence and comments.
- Nested sub-documents and search for organising team knowledge.
- Optional AI helpers that work with any OpenAI-compatible provider.
Writing and live collaboration
Docs uses a block editor with slash commands, rich text and Markdown, and it supports offline editing. Several people can edit at once, with live cursors, presence and comments. Access control can be set per document, including external guests and public links. Version history lets you roll a document back to an earlier state.
- Collaboration
- Block editor
- Markdown
- Comments
Organising knowledge and optional AI
Documents can contain sub-documents, building a hierarchy for team knowledge, and content is searchable. A presentation mode turns a document into slides. AI features are off by default and can be turned on with an API key and base URL for any OpenAI-compatible provider, including one you run yourself. A resource server API and a server-to-server API allow integrations, such as pushing meeting transcripts from La Suite Meet.
- Sub-documents
- Search
- AI
- API
Run it yourself under MIT
Docs runs as four services: a frontend, a Django backend, a collaboration server and a conversion service, backed by PostgreSQL, Redis and Valkey. It also needs an OpenID Connect identity provider and S3-compatible object storage, and the docs include Keycloak and Minio examples. The maintainers run it on Kubernetes in production, while the Docker Compose setup is provided but described as experimental. Docs is released under the MIT licence. Word and PDF export rely on GPL-licensed BlockNote packages, which the default MIT build leaves out.
- Self-hosted
- Kubernetes
- OIDC
- MIT
Where it fits
Use cases
- 01
Write a document with colleagues at the same time
Create a document and build it from blocks using slash commands, in rich text or Markdown. Share it with colleagues or external guests at the access level each one needs, and see their cursors and comments as they work. Version history lets you roll back to an earlier state.
- 02
Turn notes into a simple presentation
Split a document into slides with the --- delimiter, then start the presentation from any block. Present full screen and move between slides with the keyboard. A presentation link lets others open the same slides.
- 03
Bring existing documents into a shared space
Import existing .docx and Markdown files into Docs. Arrange them as sub-documents under a parent page so related material sits together. Pin the pages you use most and find the rest with search.