dorfteich/docs/features.md

# Dorfteich — what it is and why you might want it

_Deutsche Fassung: [docs/de/features.md](de/features.md)_

Dorfteich is an open-source wiki for people who want to think and write
together — in real time, on their own server, without handing their
knowledge to a cloud company.

The name means "village pond": the place where everyone in the village
comes together. Your wiki is organized into **ponds** — one personal pond
for every member, plus shared ponds for teams, clubs, families, or
projects.

## Writing together, live

- **Real-time collaboration.** Open the same page as a colleague and
  watch each other type — with named cursors and a presence strip showing
  who is on the page. No locking, no "someone else is editing" dialogs,
  no lost changes.
- **Works offline.** Keep typing when the connection drops; your edits
  merge back in automatically when you are online again.
- **A friendly editor.** Headings, lists, task lists, tables, quotes,
  code blocks, and images — with full **Markdown** round-trip: what you
  write can always leave the system as clean Markdown again.
- **Wikilinks.** Type `[[page-name]]` to link pages. Links to pages that
  do not exist yet are collected for you, one click creates them.
  Backlinks show you where every page is referenced.

## Never lose anything

- **Version history.** Every page keeps automatic snapshots plus named
  versions you save yourself. Compare, see who contributed, and restore
  any earlier state — restores are visible live in every open editor.
- **Trash with a grace period.** Deleted pages sit in a per-pond trash
  and can be restored for weeks before they are purged.
- **Real backups.** Nightly database + file backups, optional off-host
  copies to any **Nextcloud** you control, and a tested one-click restore
  — including a documented path to rebuild an instance from nothing.

## Organize the way you think

- **Page tree**: nest pages under pages (up to 6 levels) — slugs and links
  stay flat, so moving a page never breaks anything; the ZIP export also
  stays flat (the hierarchy is organizational only)
- **Obsidian vault import**: a pond admin uploads a whole vault as a ZIP —
  folders become the page tree, tags become labels, `[[wikilinks]]` are
  rewritten so they keep working, and images come along as pond files
- **Dead links are one click from a page**: opening a link to a page that
  does not exist yet offers to create it right there
- **Knowledge graph**: an interactive map of every pond — pages as nodes,
  wikilinks as edges, missing targets as dashed phantoms you can create
  with a click; each page also gets a local neighborhood graph
- **Labels**, hierarchical if you like, to slice a pond any way you want
  — and to scope access rules (see below).
- **Fast full-text search** across everything you may read — accent- and
  umlaut-insensitive, with substring matching.
- **A table of contents, page indexes, diagrams** and more through
  built-in plugins (see "Extensible" below).

## Share exactly as much as you want

- **Fine-grained permissions.** Grant read or write access per pond, per
  label, or per page — to individual people, to all signed-in members, or
  to the public internet. Deny rules carve out exceptions. A built-in
  inspector explains _why_ someone can or cannot see a page.
- **Public pages.** Publish selected pages read-only to the world, with
  clean URLs — the rest of the pond stays private.
- **Comments.** Discuss in threads next to the content, resolve what is
  settled, and choose per pond whether every reader or only editors may
  comment.
- **Notifications you control.** Watch pages or whole ponds, get an
  in-app inbox, and choose e-mail digests (hourly, daily, or off) with a
  working unsubscribe link.

## Your documents come and go freely

- **Import** Word (`.docx`), LibreOffice (`.odt`), and Markdown files —
  including embedded images.
- **Export** any page as Markdown, Word, LibreOffice, or **PDF** (with
  your pond's typography), and any pond as a ZIP of Markdown files. No
  lock-in, ever.

## Machines are welcome too — on your terms

- **REST API.** A clean, token-authenticated public API to read, write,
  search, label, and comment — with an OpenAPI description. Tokens carry
  exactly the permissions of their owner, never more.
- **Built-in MCP endpoint.** Connect Claude Code or any MCP-capable AI
  assistant directly to your wiki — it can search, read, and (if you
  allow it) write pages. Both interfaces are **off by default** and each
  pond opts in separately.

## Extensible, but safely

- **Plugins** add block types (Mermaid diagrams, full **draw.io**
  editing), page tools (table of contents, page index), and section
  styles. Every plugin runs in a strict sandbox: no cookies, no storage,
  no network — it cannot read more than the person looking at it.
- Reference plugins ship with the product and double as documented
  examples for writing your own.

## Private by design

- **Self-hosted.** One `docker compose up`, a friendly first-run wizard,
  and it is yours. Everything — fonts included — is served from your own
  domain: pages make **zero requests to third parties**.
- **GDPR-friendly.** Imprint and privacy-policy pages built in (with
  templates), personal data export as ZIP, account deletion with
  content-preserving pseudonymization, and an audit trail of
  administrative actions.
- **Bilingual.** The entire interface speaks German and English; every
  user picks their language.

## Honest operations

- Health endpoints that distinguish "down" from "degraded", an admin
  system panel with job status, backup state, audit log and storage
  overview, monthly automated restore drills — the operator can _prove_
  the backups work, not just hope.

---

_Dorfteich is MIT-licensed open source. If you can run Docker, you can
run Dorfteich — see [self-hosting](self-hosting/README.md)._