Open source · The workspace you actually own
Blocks, databases, live collaboration and publishing — over a vault on your Mac, stitched together with [[wikilinks]], backlinks and a living graph. Self-hosted. Free and open source. No Prism cloud account, ever.
Why Prism
Notion made workspaces beautiful and collaborative. Obsidian made them yours. Prism is what happens when you refuse to pick one.
The power
The soul
For people who love Obsidian
Every [[link]] and mention becomes an edge. Meetings connect to people, people to projects, projects to the pages that matter. Open any page and see what points back at it.
Hover a note to light up its neighbours. Drag one to pull the web.
Databases
Any tag becomes a database, and its rows are ordinary pages — nothing is copied. Flip between views and the same pages move with you.
| Page | Status | Owner | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Record the launch video | In progress | Ana | Nov 12 |
| Write release notes | To do | Maya | Nov 13 |
| Landing page | In progress | Maya | Nov 10 |
| Pair the iPhone app | To do | Theo | Nov 14 |
| Seed tag schemas | Done | Ana | Nov 9 |
| Import the old wiki | Done | Theo | Nov 11 |
| Publish the docs site | To do | Ana | Nov 15 |
| Invite the team | In progress | Theo | Nov 13 |
And the rest of your work
Email and chat arrive in your vault, threaded and linked to the people involved — so every person's page shows every conversation.
Step back through every save and restore any version. Restoring is undoable too.
Claude can read and edit your workspace — with exactly the permissions of the account it acts for.
Turn a tag into a public, read-only site, optionally behind a password. New pages appear on their own.
Agenda, day, week and month. Each meeting gets a page for its notes and its people.
One search across pages, messages and meetings, with filters for type, date and who wrote it.
Import Markdown, HTML, CSV or a Notion export with its nesting and links intact. Export one page or the whole workspace as Markdown or HTML.
Side by side
We love both of these tools — that's why we built the thing in between.
| Feature | Prism | Notion | Obsidian |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your data lives | In your vault, on your Mac | In Notion's cloud | In files on your device |
| Real-time collaboration | ✓ Live cursors, comments, suggestions | ✓ | — Not built in |
| Databases with board, table and calendar views | ✓ | ✓ | Partial Bases: table and card views |
| [[Wikilinks]], backlinks and a graph | ✓ | Partial Links and backlinks, no graph | ✓ |
| Works offline | ✓ Edits sync when you're back | Partial Pages you make available offline | ✓ |
| Publish to the web | ✓ From your own server | ✓ | Partial Paid add-on |
| Self-hosted | ✓ Server and vault on your Mac | — | Partial Local app; sync is a service or DIY |
| Open source | ✓ AGPL-3.0 | — | — Closed-source app |
Our own reading of each product as of November 2026 — features change, so check before you choose. Notion and Obsidian are trademarks of their respective owners; Prism is not affiliated with either.
Your data, your vault
Prism has no cloud of its own. Your apps talk to Prism Server on your Mac; only the server holds the key to your Parachute vault, and it checks every request against your permissions first.
Every device
A native Mac app, an iPhone and iPad app, and any browser — all talking to your server.
Prism Client for Apple-silicon Macs. Signed, notarized, updates in place, keeps its sign-in in your Keychain. Quick capture with ⌘⇧Space.
A real app with notifications, Face ID app lock and a keyboard toolbar made for writing. On TestFlight now; the App Store later.
Your server serves Prism to any browser. Install it as an app, keep working offline, share pages with people who don't use Prism yet.
Get started
Setup is done by an agent: run Claude Code, ask it to “set up Prism”, and it walks you through each step while Prism's own checklist ticks them off. Stop and resume any time.
On an Apple-silicon Mac with macOS 14 or newer, unpack the host bundle and start the setup run.
./prism-host-*/bin/prism setupSetup finds your Parachute vault — or installs it with your yes — and hands the server its key directly. You never see it, so it never lands in a chat.
Sign in as the owner, install Prism for Mac, sign in your phone. Add mail, calendar, chat and transcripts when you're ready.
Prism v1 is here — free and open source — for Apple-silicon Macs, with the iPhone and iPad app on TestFlight.
Free and open source under the GNU AGPL-3.0 (about the licence). Use it for anything, including your business. If you run a changed copy for others over a network, share your changes under the same licence. Read, change and self-host every line on GitHub.