Cardlake

Cardlake

A self-hostable feed that Claude and ChatGPT can save to. Reminders, learnings, bookmarks and work follow-ups in one place you own: open source (AGPL), on your own Vercel and Neon accounts.

[Get started](#get-started) · What it does · Looking after your Cardlake · For developers

Why it exists: I wanted one place every AI could write to. So I built it. (on Medium)

Get started

Don't want to host it yourself? Use Cardlake at cardlake.app.

To run your own: free on Vercel's and Neon's free plans, about 10 minutes, no terminal.

1. Sign up at Vercel at vercel.com/signup with Continue with GitHub. No GitHub account? GitHub's sign-in page has Create an account (github.com/signup). Finish Vercel's sign-up, including its code, until you see its dashboard.
2. Click Deploy, then Create, add Neon (your database) and Blob (your attachments) on their free plans, and Deploy:

If Vercel shows its dashboard instead, come back and click the button again.

1. Open your site and set your password right away: for your security, setup is open for one hour after your site first starts, then it locks so nobody else can claim it. (Missed it? The setup page explains how to reopen it.)
2. Optional: connect Claude or ChatGPT. In Cardlake, click Connect AI.

New to Vercel or GitHub? The step-by-step guide has a picture for every step.

The whole deploy, from the button to a first card, in 37 seconds:

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/8834c580-ecd8-4ebc-847b-f73f6f40099c

What it does

Cardlake turns everything you don't want to forget (reminders, articles to read, family updates, bookmarks, notes, and your GitHub issues) into a single feed, instead of a dozen apps you never open.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/10d1ce6c-f12a-42bf-aed6-dba16530b934

• Talk to it from your AI. Tell Claude or ChatGPT "remind me Wednesday at 10" or "what's on today?" and it reads and writes your feed over MCP. Every card type and action works from chat.
• In Telegram, with Hermes Agent. The Cardlake plugin for Hermes shows your cards in your Telegram chat with Done, Tomorrow and Undo buttons. Connect Hermes to your own Cardlake from Connect AI, and the plugin's links follow it.
• One feed for everything. Reminders, learnings, work items, family updates, bookmarks and misc notes, with a progress bar and a streak.
• Snooze, pin, favorite. Not today? Snooze a card and it comes back when it should. Pin what matters this week.
• Your GitHub issues as cards, brought in with one click.
• Save from any app. Install it on your phone and share a link or text to Cardlake; it becomes a card.
• Search and attachments. Find any card; attach photos and files.
• Yours. Your own database, your own deployment, one account: yours. Open source under AGPL-3.0.

Why Cardlake

Notes apps, task apps and read-later apps each hold a piece of what you meant to come back to, and you check none of them. Cardlake is the one place it all lands, and the place your AI writes to when you ask it to remember something. Because your own copy runs on your own Vercel and Neon accounts, what you and your AI save stays with you.

Why a feed, not folders

Something you mean to come back to keeps nagging at you until it's written down somewhere you trust. One feed is easier to keep up with than seven apps, and it brings things back to the top before you forget them.

Looking after your Cardlake

It's yours alone

Your Cardlake has one account, yours. There's nobody to administer: no sign-up, no user list, no invites. Sign in with the same email and password on your phone and other computers.

Forgot your password?

In Vercel, open your project, then Settings and Environment Variables. Add CARDLE_SETUP_OPEN with the value 1, save, and redeploy (Deployments, ⋯, Redeploy). Open /setup on your site and set a new password with the same email: you keep all your cards. Then delete CARDLE_SETUP_OPEN and redeploy again.

Getting updates

Your copy doesn't update by itself. When a new version is out, Cardlake shows Update available at the top; it leads to your Cardlake's /updates page. The first time, click Turn on updates there: GitHub opens with the update file filled in, ready to commit. After that, to get the latest Cardlake, open your copy on GitHub, then Actions, Update Cardlake and Run workflow. Vercel deploys the new version a minute or two later, and you keep all your cards. If you've changed the code yourself, it stops rather than erase your changes. To also hear about new versions by email, open Cardlake on GitHub and choose Watch, Custom, Releases.

Settings

Everything else is optional. Cardlake makes its own secret keys and sets up its own database. docs/ENVIRONMENT.md lists the settings you can add later, such as a custom domain, and docs/ADMIN.md covers running it.

For developers

Quick start (local development)

git clone https://github.com/cardleforall/cardlakeforall.git

cd cardlakeforall npm ci cp .env.example .env.local # fill in the values -- see docs/ENVIRONMENT.md npm run dev

This starts a local dev server at http://localhost:3000 that serves public/ statically and routes /api/* to the same handler files Vercel uses in production; no separate build step, no vercel dev required. Point DATABASE_URL at a database of your own, never one with real data.

Development

npm ci

npm test

npm run build:vault validates the committed shell and accepts --target for tests. Outside services that feed cards in (currently GitHub Issues) are integrations; docs/INTEGRATIONS.md covers how they work and how to add one. See .env.example and docs/ENVIRONMENT.md for what each environment variable does.

npm test covers the build; the actual test suite (tests/unit/ offline unit tests, tests/sit/ system integration tests against a deployment) is run separately via npm run test:lite / npm run test:full; see tests/README.md for the unit/SIT split and when to run which tier.

Architecture

• Frontend: public/vault/index.html is a committed, hand-maintained shell (not generated from markdown or any other source), progressively enhanced with plain JS in public/vault/assets/.
• Backend: Vercel serverless functions in api/, consolidated per resource area to stay within Vercel's Hobby function-count limit (see .vercelignore and the comments in api/vault.js / api/auth.js).
• Sign-in: one owner with a password, set at /setup (see docs/ADMIN.md).
• Uploads: Server-side format checks and an explicit allowlist apply to files and attachments; see supported formats and limits.
• Database: Neon Postgres. Schema lives in schema-v2.sql and applies itself on the first request after a deploy.
• MCP server: api/mcp.js + api/_lib/mcp-tools.js expose every card type and feed action (snooze, pin, favorite) to any MCP-compatible AI assistant. See docs/MCP_SERVER.md.

Deployment

Deployment is GitHub-to-Vercel: pushes to the connected main branch create production deployments; pull requests create previews. See DEPLOY.md.

Contributing

Issues are welcome; pull requests aren't accepted. See CONTRIBUTING.md for why, and for setting up and testing your own copy. Please also read the Code of Conduct.

License

Cardlake is free software under the GNU AGPL-3.0. You can use, change and run it freely. If you run a modified version as a service for other people, you must offer them its source under the same license.

Cardlake™ is a trademark of the project's maintainer. The license covers the code, not the name: run your own copy as you like, but please don't offer a service to other people under the name Cardlake.

Security issues: please report them privately, see SECURITY.md.