I built Onyka because every note app I tried kept growing into something I didn't need. Notion is a database. Obsidian is a knowledge graph. And they all have settings and options everywhere. I just wanted to open an app, write stuff down, have it encrypted, and own my data.
The feature I'm most proud of is Sparks. You type a thought, hit enter, it's captured. You give it an expiration (1 hour, 7 days, whatever). If it matters later, you promote it to a real note. If not, it just disappears. No inbox zero guilt, no cleanup sessions.
Everything is encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM. One SQLite file, one Docker command, no cloud, no account creation, no telemetry. I run it on a small server at home and that's it.
I'm a sysadmin, not a developer. I built this for my own use and kept polishing it until it felt worth sharing. It's open source (AGPL-3.0), self-hosted, free forever.
Curious to hear what you think, especially if you've been looking for something simpler than what's out there.
Onyka was submitted on Product Hunt and earned 0 upvotes and 1 comments, placing #154 on the daily leaderboard. Onyka - open-source, self-hosted note app. Ephemeral Sparks capture, rich editor, real-time collab, AES-256-GCM encryption at rest. Docker or Node.js, zero dependencies.
On the analytics side, Onyka competes within Open Source, Notes and GitHub — topics that collectively have 117.8k followers on Product Hunt. The dashboard above tracks how Onyka performed against the three products that launched closest to it on the same day.
For a complete overview of Onyka including community comment highlights and product details, visit the product overview.
