Quire

Local Markdown for humans and AI agents, with every edit visible, attributable, and reviewable.

Point Quire at a folder of Markdown. The original .md files become a live multiplayer workspace,
and AI agents can join the same editing sessions as first-class collaborators with visible cursors
and separately revertable edits. There is no import step, cloud copy, or conversion round trip:
your filesystem remains the source of truth, ready for git, vim, VS Code, and every other tool you
already use.

Recorded against the real application. A person types while an agent edits the same document,
proposes a change that never touches the file until it is accepted, and then authorship is
revealed. Nobody reloads, and nothing conflicts.

Public beta: Quire requires Node.js 22 or newer and runs locally with no Quire account,
subscription, or telemetry.

Quick start

npx quiredocs ~/my-notes

Open http://127.0.0.1:4321 in a browser. Press Ctrl+C in the terminal when you are done.

Or from a clone:

npm install && npm run build
node packages/cli/bin/quire.js ~/my-notes

No account. No signup. Binds 127.0.0.1 by default. Core editing makes no outbound requests.

Not ready to point it at your own files? Start a sample vault that is deleted when Quire stops:

npx quiredocs --demo

Files and smaller screens

The vault sidebar groups documents into collapsible folders. Search matches filenames, folder
paths, and document contents. On phones and tablets, use Files, Edit, Preview, and
Comments to switch between full-width views without losing your place. Desktop windows also
have Edit / Split / Preview controls.

A phone connects to the computer running Quire; localhost on the phone refers to the phone
itself. Before making a vault reachable by workshop attendees, read the
network access limitations.

Where it sits

Plenty of tools do two of these. Quire is the one that does all three.

The difference that matters: in Quire the agent is a peer in the same CRDT session you are typing
in — visible cursor, attributed spans, separately revertable — rather than a batch process whose
diff you read afterwards.

Not another Markdown import/export workflow

Google Docs can import and export Markdown,
and other cloud editors offer similar conversion workflows. That is useful when the cloud document
is the workspace. Quire is for the opposite workflow: the files in your local folder stay
authoritative while people, agents, external editors, and git can all work with them.

Quire does not claim that every renderer interprets every Markdown extension identically. It does
keep syntax-rich Markdown as source text, and the release suite checks a fixture containing YAML
frontmatter, task lists, tables, fenced code, Mermaid, wiki-links, footnotes, raw HTML, and comments
for byte-for-byte stability through an unchanged editing session. The same fixture changed by 22
inserted and 30 deleted lines after an untouched Google Docs import/export round trip; see the
reproducible comparison, including what Google preserved.

What works today

Connecting an agent

Keep Quire running, then add its local MCP server to the client you use. These commands download
the published Quire package from npm; they do not require a Quire account or credential.

Claude Code

claude mcp add quire -- npx -y -p quiredocs@latest quire-mcp \
  --url http://127.0.0.1:4321 --name "Claude Code"

On native Windows, put cmd /c before npx:

claude mcp add quire -- cmd /c npx -y -p quiredocs@latest quire-mcp --url http://127.0.0.1:4321 --name "Claude Code"

Codex

codex mcp add quire -- npx -y -p quiredocs@latest quire-mcp \
  --url http://127.0.0.1:4321 --name Codex

Cursor

Add this to .cursor/mcp.json in the project where Cursor should use Quire:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "quire": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y", "-p", "quiredocs@latest", "quire-mcp",
        "--url", "http://127.0.0.1:4321",
        "--name", "Cursor"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Restart or reload the client after adding Quire. The AI client may require its own account or paid
plan; that is separate from Quire, which remains free and local.

Tools: list_documents, read_document, edit_document (with suggest), append_document,
list_suggestions, list_comments, add_comment, search_vault.

The agent gets a presence identity and a cursor. You can type straight through its edits —
CRDTs make that a non-event.

Trust and permissions

Quire is open source under AGPL-3.0-or-later, and the npm package is built from this
repository. The package has no runtime dependency downloads and no preinstall, install, or
postinstall hooks. Its prepublishOnly script is a maintainer-side release check; npm does not
run it when somebody installs Quire.

What Quire can do on a user's computer:

Quire has no analytics, advertising SDK, auto-updater, credential prompt, background service, or
payment integration. Discover does not read or forward GITHUB_TOKEN. Third-party Markdown added
through Discover is data, not executable code, but agent instruction files can influence an agent
that later reads them; inspect imported content before relying on it.

The server serves only its own origin and rejects cross-origin browser requests. There is no
authentication, so treat --host 0.0.0.0 as "anyone who can reach this port can read and edit the
vault." The complete threat model and limitations are in SECURITY.md.

Cost

Quire itself is free to download, run, self-host, and publish as a public npm package. It requires
no paid Quire infrastructure. Your computer, internet connection, and any AI provider you connect
are separate: Claude, OpenAI, a hosted VM, a domain, a tunnel, Codespaces, or a larger CI runner may
charge under that provider's own plan. None is required for local Quire.

Self-hosting

docker compose up --build

The container binds to 127.0.0.1 deliberately. Quire has no authentication, so anyone who
can reach the port can read and edit every document — read SECURITY.md
before widening that.

Community

Questions and ideas belong in Discussions.
Use the issue tracker for reproducible bugs and
planned features, and read CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request.
If Quire solves a problem you care about, starring the repository helps other people find it.

Contact

• General questions and feedback: GitHub Discussions
• Bug reports: GitHub Issues
• Security vulnerabilities: report privately

Documents

Licence

The entire repository and the bundled quiredocs distribution are licensed under
AGPL-3.0-or-later. Quire does not currently publish a separate permissive SDK.