Deploy Trilium Notes in one click

What is Trilium Notes?

Trilium Notes is a free, open-source note-taking app built for large personal knowledge bases, an alternative to Notion, Evernote and Obsidian for people who want their notes on their own server. Notes form a tree as deep as you like, and one note can sit in several places at once. Besides rich text with tables, images and math, a note can be code, an Excalidraw canvas, a mind map, a geo map or a relation map, and attributes and scripts turn notes into small tools. Every note keeps its revisions, and full-text search finds it again.

The server is almost the same app in the browser, with a touch-friendly view for phones, and the desktop apps for Windows, macOS and Linux sync with it. Protected notes are encrypted with your password, a note can be shared publicly by a link, and a web clipper saves pages from the browser. This template makes a new, empty knowledge base with the password given before Trilium answers anyone. The catch: Trilium is for one person, with one password and no accounts for others, and it has no official mobile app.

Hosting Trilium Notes on Pethost

1. You sign in to Pethost with a passkey, GitHub or Google. No machine yet? You pick a plan, and the link waits until it is ready.
2. New project opens at Trilium Notes. You fill in what it asks for and click Create project: Password.
3. In a minute or two Trilium Notes is live at its own address with HTTPS. Its secrets are made at random, and its data is in the nightly backup.
4. It is a project like any other: you or your agent can change it, roll it back or restore it.

Questions about Trilium Notes

Trilium Notes Docker Compose file

The template is this compose.yaml and the variables written into the project’s .env as it is created. Pethost runs the file as it is written.

Containers: trilium (triliumnext/trilium:v0.106.1).

Volumes, in the nightly backup: data.

services:
  trilium:
    image: triliumnext/trilium:v0.106.1
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      ADMIN_PASSWORD: ${ADMIN_PASSWORD}
      # Requests come through the proxy: the client's own address is the one it forwards, so that
      # a stranger's wrong passwords do not lock everyone out of signing in.
      TRILIUM_NETWORK_TRUSTEDREVERSEPROXY: uniquelocal
    # A new Trilium offers its setup to whoever opens it first, then asks them for the password.
    # So while it has no password, it runs on port 8081, which nobody reaches: a new knowledge base
    # is made there with the password given, and only then does Trilium answer on 8080.
    command:
      - sh
      - -c
      - |
        set -e
        if ! node -e '
          const { DatabaseSync } = require("node:sqlite");
          const db = new DatabaseSync(process.env.TRILIUM_DATA_DIR + "/document.db", { readOnly: true });
          const row = db.prepare("select value from options where name = ?").get("passwordVerificationHash");
          process.exit(row?.value ? 0 : 1);
        ' 2>/dev/null; then
          TRILIUM_PORT=8081 node ./main.mjs &
          setup=$$!
          node -e '
            const base = "http://127.0.0.1:8081";
            const setUp = async () => {
              const status = await fetch(base + "/api/setup/status").then((r) => r.json());
              if (!status.isInitialized) {
                const made = await fetch(base + "/api/setup/new-document?skipDemoDb", {
                  method: "POST",
                  headers: { "content-type": "application/json" },
                  body: JSON.stringify({ locale: "en" })
                });
                if (!made.ok) throw new Error("new-document: " + made.status + " " + (await made.text()));
              }
              const password = process.env.ADMIN_PASSWORD;
              const set = await fetch(base + "/set-password", {
                method: "POST",
                body: new URLSearchParams({ password1: password, password2: password }),
                redirect: "manual"
              });
              if (set.status !== 302) throw new Error("set-password: " + set.status + " " + (await set.text()));
            };
            (async () => {
              let failure;
              for (let i = 0; i < 180; i++) {
                try {
                  return await setUp();
                } catch (error) {
                  failure = error;
                  await new Promise((done) => setTimeout(done, 1000));
                }
              }
              console.error(failure);
              process.exit(1);
            })();
          '
          kill $$setup
          wait $$setup || true
        fi
        chown -R node:node /home/node
        exec su -c "node ./main.mjs" node
    volumes:
      - data:/home/node/trilium-data

volumes:
  data:

compose.yamlSee it on GitHub