Doca is an open-source Notion alternative with AI and MCP

A small team that wanted a shared wiki with an AI assistant has had two choices. Pay for Notion or Confluence. Or stitch together a Markdown repo with a chatbot on the side. A new open-source project called Doca offers a third option. It is a self-hosted documents and knowledge base. It runs with Docker. The AI assistant and MCP support are built in.

The repository is under smartdoca on GitHub. It has 408 stars at the time of writing. GitHub shows it was created on 27 September 2026. The licence is MIT. The latest release, v0.2.17, was published on 24 October 2026.

Five editors and a knowledge library

The author lists five editor formats in one workspace. Rich text for plans and meeting notes. Markdown for notes and code. Spreadsheets for budgets and project data. Slides for product updates. An infinite canvas for process maps and mind maps. Multiple people can edit the same document at the same time. The system keeps a version history, comments and permission controls.

Documents are grouped into knowledge libraries. The author also lists knowledge books. These are shared pages built from source evidence, with a workflow and human review before anything is published. That is the piece most Notion-style tools skip.

The AI pieces, and the limits the author states

The AI assistant works with documents the user has given it access to. It reads PDF and Office attachments. It can generate or edit images and analyse webpage material. The author says the assistant needs a configured model and service. Doca does not include one.

Doca runs an MCP service, so an outside AI client such as Codex can call Doca's tools and skills. The user authorises each tool. The service can run as a personal account or as a company integration acting on behalf of a named user.

A Chrome and Edge browser extension captures pages or selections. The user picks where the clip is saved, and whether to create a new document or add to one. Doca AI can then organise the captures in the sidebar.

What it costs to run

The default Docker image uses SQLite and runs on one server. For a bigger team, Doca supports shared PostgreSQL, Redis and file storage so it can run as multiple replicas. The file store can be local or S3-compatible. Business plugins use the public @smartdoca/plugin-sdk.

Sign-in supports a password, OIDC, Google, GitHub, WeChat QR and QQ. The interface is in Chinese and English. External sign-in needs a configured service on the other side.

Two caveats the author states on the README. The project does not include quick-notes, mail, calendar, membership or content moderation plugins by default. And one deployment has one account system, so a user cannot be in two groups by accident.

A team that pays for Notion may want its documents and its model in the same workspace. Doca is a project worth testing for that case. One Docker command sets it up. The AI assistant and the MCP endpoint are built in. Two questions remain. Which model should it use? And how much should a team trust a 29 day-old codebase with its working notes?

Source

smartdoca/doca on GitHub.