CodiMD
CodiMD (now HedgeDoc) is an open‑source, collaborative, web‑based Markdown editor for real‑time note‑taking, presentations, and team documentation. It provides lightweight, Markdown‑first collaboration for small technical teams that want data control, revision history, and low software cost.
It is for engineers, analysts, educators, and small product teams who prefer plain‑text workflows and simple operational control. It solves fast co‑editing in meetings, keeps content portable for versioning and diffs, supports MathJax and diagrams for technical documents, and produces quick slide decks from the same source. It also lowers licensing cost compared with hosted commercial alternatives.
Use Cases
- Daily meeting notes converted into public slide decks quickly.
- Runbooks and postmortems with revision history and exports.
- Collaborative data model docs and analysis write‑ups with diagrams.
- Author READMEs, draft blog posts, and side project docs.
- Lecture notes and reproducible labs with MathJax support.
- Use Markdown files as single source for automated documents.
Strengths
- Real‑time collaborative editing for immediate shared context.
- Markdown plus MathJax and diagrams for technical content.
- Slide mode converts notes into quick presentations.
- Revision history and Markdown/HTML exports for auditability.
- OAuth and user accounts enable SSO and team access control.
- Lightweight, Markdown‑first UX matches developer workflows.
- AGPL‑3.0 open source license avoids licensing fees.
- Designed for self‑hosting; gives full control over data.
Limitations
- You own operations: backups, upgrades, and scaling responsibilities.
- Enterprise features and fine‑grained permissions are limited.
- Some exports (PDF or advanced formatting) require external tools.
- Data‑location guarantees from hosted providers are Unverified.
Final Thoughts
Try it now if your team prefers Markdown, wants data control, and can operate a simple web app.
Choose a managed cloud when you need vendor SLAs, advanced permissions, or hosted backups; it adds hosting, support, and operational guarantees.