Thank you so much! Great question. Kalmia actually borrows elements from all three, but in different ways:
* On the GUI side, it leans heavily towards TinaCMS. We even considered using TinaCMS directly (Tinasaurus (https://github.com/tinacms/tinasaurus)) but ultimately built our own for better integration with our backend.
* For the backend (MDX -> HTML) generation, it's very similar to Docusaurus. We use a tool called RsPress, which is part of the RsBuild/RsPack tool suite. It's relatively new, but because it's written in Rust, it's much faster than Docusaurus. (Fun fact, if you look at the commit history you will see that we initially used Docusaurus but then migrated away from it!)
* Wiki.js is extremely extensive, but it’s dropping support for SQLite, which was a big factor for us. Also, its frontend for documentation doesn’t feel as fast as RsPress (you can try ours out on kalmia.difuse.io it's hosted on single core azure server). The biggest reason we didn’t go with Wiki.js was the versioning system—it felt clunky (or non existent for entire docs?). In Kalmia, versioning the entire documentation is just a one-click process.
So, in short, Kalmia combines a TinaCMS-like editing experience with Docusaurus-like static site generation, but with speed advantages from the latest Rust based tooling for SSG.
I actually just discovered Outline yesterday! It's an awesome platform. Our feature set isn't as extensive (yet), especially when it comes to integrations—they've really nailed that. However, many of the other features, like live collaboration and better security, are things we're actively working on and should be available in the next few releases.
One major difference between Outline and Kalmia is the license. I believe Outline uses BSL, while Kalmia is AGPL.
I browsed the documentaton a bit and struggle to understand. CMS for me means "web server side application that stores data". However I don't understand how this goes together with "Cross-Platform Compatibility: Run Kalmia virtually anywhere thanks to its Go-based architecture."
I couldn't find a roadmap for the project but I would suggest to implement some sort of SSO. At work it was so much easier to justify bringing in a new tool like https://www.getoutline.com/ where we could use OIDC to integrate with Gitlab user management.
Thank you for the feedback! I understand the confusion. Kalmia is indeed a server-side CMS, but its Go-based architecture allows it to be lightweight and run on various platforms, from cloud servers to smaller setups like Raspberry Pi.
Think of Kalmia as similar to Docusaurus, but with a built-in GUI—one of the most requested features from the Docusaurus community (https://docusaurus.io/feature-requests/p/make-content-editin...). With Kalmia, non-technical users can contribute to documentation without needing to know Git or Markdown, making content editing much easier.
We store the documentation data in a database (Postgres or SQLite), and markdown/HTML is generated only when updates, deletions, or creations happen. The built HTML is stored in memory for fast access, ensuring performance remains smooth even for large docs.
We’re also working on features like export to zip and GitHub Pages support, so users can host their docs externally if needed.
Regarding SSO, it’s a great suggestion. We’re looking into integrating Single Sign-On (SSO) to streamline user management and improve security. This will help with easier adoption in environments that already use OIDC for authentication. (We already supported OAuth with Github/Microsoft/Google)
Thanks again for your thoughtful input, and I appreciate you checking out Kalmia!
Nice framework! I think it's missing a graph view that shows the connections between documents. Something like what Quartz provides. https://quartz.jzhao.xyz/
This is accurate, we also use it for one of our other products here https://docs.difuse.io/, although a demo instance for people to play around with is not a bad idea, will look into that.
Good point! We use a database (SQLite or Postgres) to enable more advanced features like versioning, collaboration, and access control, which aren't easily managed with static files alone. The database also allows us to scale better for teams with frequent updates.
While it does limit deployment to platforms like GitHub Pages, Kalmia is designed for teams that need more than just static documentation—think of it as a middle ground between static site generators and fully dynamic CMS solutions. For purely static sites, there are other great options out there, but Kalmia focuses on more interactive, collaborative documentation.
That said, we’re actually interested in providing an option for users to export and deploy it to platforms like GitHub Pages or similar, so stay tuned for future updates on that!
You could look into frontmatter to store metadata within the files, and just load it all into memory on startup. Even for huge projects, that probably won’t hurt anyway.
We already load all the documentation assets into memory whenever something changes. Even with large projects spanning hundreds of pages and page groups, it remains very fast—under 1 second in our testing.
That being said, there are some cases where a database is necessary. For example, handling multiple people editing the same document simultaneously wouldn’t work well with just flat files. Also, where would we store user emails/passwords for authentication? Another feature Kalmia supports is private documentation, where users need to log in to access certain docs (there's a simple toggle to enable authentication).
That said, adding an "export to zip" or "push to git" button is totally feasible, and it's something we've had a lot of requests for. While we don't personally use it, we'll be adding it so people can host their docs on static file platforms without needing Kalmia as the backend.
Using Rust for markdown parsing seems like the epitome of driving a racecar to the grocery store- I’m curious if you have any metrics as to how much build time was reduced with that over using something like Node. I’d guess it’s <10ms.
We saw nearly the same reduction in build times (~80-90%) as quoted in the official RsPress documentation. Keep in mind, we're using MDX, not just plain Markdown.
There can be more of a difference than you might expect. In static site generators, Eleventy is about as fast as you can get in the JavaScript world, and is still 2-3x the time for Hugo in Go [1]. A couple orders of magnitude more than <10ms in this test which is predominantly markdown parsing.
Anecdotally, for large or extra large sites, the build performance gap between even Eleventy and Hugo can be quite large. And the gap from either of those to the newer JavaScript tools like Next.js is enormous.
* On the GUI side, it leans heavily towards TinaCMS. We even considered using TinaCMS directly (Tinasaurus (https://github.com/tinacms/tinasaurus)) but ultimately built our own for better integration with our backend.
* For the backend (MDX -> HTML) generation, it's very similar to Docusaurus. We use a tool called RsPress, which is part of the RsBuild/RsPack tool suite. It's relatively new, but because it's written in Rust, it's much faster than Docusaurus. (Fun fact, if you look at the commit history you will see that we initially used Docusaurus but then migrated away from it!)
* Wiki.js is extremely extensive, but it’s dropping support for SQLite, which was a big factor for us. Also, its frontend for documentation doesn’t feel as fast as RsPress (you can try ours out on kalmia.difuse.io it's hosted on single core azure server). The biggest reason we didn’t go with Wiki.js was the versioning system—it felt clunky (or non existent for entire docs?). In Kalmia, versioning the entire documentation is just a one-click process.
So, in short, Kalmia combines a TinaCMS-like editing experience with Docusaurus-like static site generation, but with speed advantages from the latest Rust based tooling for SSG.
They, too, focus on the collaborative, 'similar-to-git-workflow', and versioned approach towards documentation.
Happy to see variety in the 'docs' tools area, and really appreciate it being FOSS. Looking forward to trying out Kalmia on some project soon.
One major difference between Outline and Kalmia is the license. I believe Outline uses BSL, while Kalmia is AGPL.
Would be happy to switch to a self-hosted FOSS alternative though.
I couldn't find a roadmap for the project but I would suggest to implement some sort of SSO. At work it was so much easier to justify bringing in a new tool like https://www.getoutline.com/ where we could use OIDC to integrate with Gitlab user management.
Think of Kalmia as similar to Docusaurus, but with a built-in GUI—one of the most requested features from the Docusaurus community (https://docusaurus.io/feature-requests/p/make-content-editin...). With Kalmia, non-technical users can contribute to documentation without needing to know Git or Markdown, making content editing much easier.
We store the documentation data in a database (Postgres or SQLite), and markdown/HTML is generated only when updates, deletions, or creations happen. The built HTML is stored in memory for fast access, ensuring performance remains smooth even for large docs.
We’re also working on features like export to zip and GitHub Pages support, so users can host their docs externally if needed.
Regarding SSO, it’s a great suggestion. We’re looking into integrating Single Sign-On (SSO) to streamline user management and improve security. This will help with easier adoption in environments that already use OIDC for authentication. (We already supported OAuth with Github/Microsoft/Google)
Thanks again for your thoughtful input, and I appreciate you checking out Kalmia!
Is this Chakra UI? The notification that shows up and bounces a bit, I've seen that on other websites too.
While it does limit deployment to platforms like GitHub Pages, Kalmia is designed for teams that need more than just static documentation—think of it as a middle ground between static site generators and fully dynamic CMS solutions. For purely static sites, there are other great options out there, but Kalmia focuses on more interactive, collaborative documentation.
That said, we’re actually interested in providing an option for users to export and deploy it to platforms like GitHub Pages or similar, so stay tuned for future updates on that!
That being said, there are some cases where a database is necessary. For example, handling multiple people editing the same document simultaneously wouldn’t work well with just flat files. Also, where would we store user emails/passwords for authentication? Another feature Kalmia supports is private documentation, where users need to log in to access certain docs (there's a simple toggle to enable authentication).
That said, adding an "export to zip" or "push to git" button is totally feasible, and it's something we've had a lot of requests for. While we don't personally use it, we'll be adding it so people can host their docs on static file platforms without needing Kalmia as the backend.
Source: https://rspress.dev/guide/start/introduction#build-performan...
Anecdotally, for large or extra large sites, the build performance gap between even Eleventy and Hugo can be quite large. And the gap from either of those to the newer JavaScript tools like Next.js is enormous.
1: https://www.11ty.dev/docs/performance/#build-performance