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Discover top open-source software, updated regularly with real-world adoption signals.
Discover top open-source software, updated regularly with real-world adoption signals.
Personal knowledge management in VS Code with wikilinks
Foam is a personal knowledge management system built on Visual Studio Code and GitHub, inspired by Roam Research. Organize research, create interconnected notes, and visualize your knowledge graph.
Foam is a personal knowledge management and sharing system that runs inside Visual Studio Code, inspired by Roam Research. It helps you organize research, maintain re-discoverable notes, write long-form content, and optionally publish to the web.
Foam transforms VS Code into a powerful knowledge workspace using wikilinks to connect atomic notes. The graph visualization shows how your thoughts interconnect, while features like link autocompletion, backlinks panel, and note embedding make it easy to build a networked knowledge base. Support for daily notes, templates, and hierarchical tags helps you maintain consistent workflows.
The system automatically syncs links when you rename files, supports unique identifiers across directories, and provides diagnostics for ambiguous wikilinks. You can navigate between notes seamlessly, peek references, embed note sections, and use link aliases for flexible organization.
Foam suits researchers, writers, students, and knowledge workers building a Second Brain or Zettelkasten. Because it's built on VS Code and stores notes as plain markdown files in GitHub repositories, you retain full ownership and control. The system is extremely extensible and free, though it remains an early-stage project under active development.
When teams consider Foam, these hosted platforms usually appear on the same shortlist.
Looking for a hosted option? These are the services engineering teams benchmark against before choosing open source.
Academic Research Management
Organize literature notes with wikilinks, visualize connections between concepts, and maintain a navigable knowledge graph of research findings across multiple projects.
Zettelkasten Implementation
Create atomic notes with unique identifiers, link ideas bidirectionally, and discover emergent insights through graph visualization and backlink exploration.
Technical Documentation Writing
Draft long-form content with embedded note sections, use templates for consistency, and publish to GitHub Pages with generated markdown references for navigation.
Daily Journaling and Reflection
Maintain a journal using daily note commands, tag entries hierarchically, and link reflections to project notes for integrated personal knowledge management.
Foam requires Visual Studio Code and a GitHub account. You'll need high tolerance for alpha-grade software as the project is under active development.
Yes, you fully own your notes. Foam stores everything as plain markdown files in your own GitHub repository, with no vendor lock-in or proprietary formats.
Absolutely. You can set your GitHub repository to private to keep your notes completely private while still using all Foam features.
Foam is inspired by Roam Research but runs inside VS Code as a free, open-source alternative. Unlike dedicated apps, it leverages VS Code's extensibility and stores notes as standard markdown in GitHub.
Foam can generate markdown references for wikilinks, making your notes navigable in GitHub UI and other markdown editors even without Foam installed.
Project at a glance
ActiveLast synced 4 days ago
