Trilium Notes¶

Trilium Notes is a hierarchical note taking application with focus on building large personal knowledge bases.

Description¶

Trilium is a powerful open-source knowledge management tool that allows for deep nesting, scripting, and advanced visualization of relationships between notes.

Where it fits in the stack¶

Category: Service / Knowledge Management

Typical use cases¶

Building a Personal Knowledge Base (PKB).
Journaling and daily logs.
Technical documentation and code snippet management.

Strengths¶

Extremely flexible hierarchical structure.
Built-in scripting (JavaScript) and automation.
Self-hostable with strong sync capabilities.

Limitations¶

Steeper learning curve compared to simple note apps.
UI can feel cluttered due to high feature density.

When to use it¶

When you need more than just flat tags or shallow folders for your notes.
When you want to automate your knowledge base with scripts.

When not to use it¶

For quick, ephemeral notes (use a simple scratchpad).
If you prefer a "polished" SaaS interface over a powerful, local-first tool.

Getting started¶

The easiest way to self-host Trilium is via Docker.

Installation (Docker)¶

docker run -d -p 8080:8080 -v ~/trilium-data:/home/node/trilium-data zadam/trilium:latest

CLI examples¶

Trilium doesn't have an official first-party CLI, but you can interact with its API using curl.

Check health¶

curl http://localhost:8080/api/health

API examples¶

Create a note (Python)¶

import requests

TRILIUM_URL = "http://localhost:8080/api"
API_TOKEN = "your-api-token"

headers = {
    "Authorization": API_TOKEN
}

note_data = {
    "parentNoteId": "root",
    "title": "My New Note",
    "type": "text",
    "content": "This is a note created via API."
}

response = requests.post(f"{TRILIUM_URL}/notes", json=note_data, headers=headers)
print(response.json())

Sources / References¶

Contribution Metadata¶

Last reviewed: 2026-04-26
Confidence: high