Building My Own Knowledge Base
Why I turned years of scattered notes and two stuffed Notion accounts into a versioned, open-source knowledge base—and what documenting continuously taught me along the way.
The initial act
Over more than five years of learning and working in production environments, I kept one idea at the back of my mind: what I learn today helps me tomorrow—and what I document today helps me even more.
Whether it’s runbooks, architecture docs, or personal notes, I’ve always treated documentation as a gift to my future self—or to whoever picks up the work next. Giving them a clear, precise, and actionable scope makes management and risk assessment faster and more reliable.
Documenting isn’t just writing things down; it’s turning experience into something others can use.The ease of documenting
This habit paid off in ways I didn’t expect. Time and again, documenting continuously sharpened my skills—whether I was writing architecture docs, guidelines, or educational material. When urgent, precision tasks showed up, I could deliver because I had already captured the context and the steps.
The biggest lesson for me: your growth isn’t only “learn → face production → repeat.” What actually makes you robust and lets you reuse your past hard work is documenting it. Experience plus documentation is what compounds.
My journey in documentation
Early in my career I was already drawn to documenting. Before AI tools were everywhere, I was hooked on Notion. I documented system design, learning notes, environment setup, and even reading notes from books.
As that data grew, something shifted. When I had to revisit an old project or redo something I’d done before, instead of thinking “I remember doing this years ago—but I’d have to research it again”, I could search my Notion and get a clear answer. It felt like past me was helping present me—and that made addressing issues, recalling project scope, and fixing things so much faster.
That feeling—finding clean documentation exactly when you need it—is what I wanted to share, not just for me, but for anyone starting out.The snowballing of my data in Notion
Over the years my Notion workspace became huge. Search and organization worked well at first. Then I hit the limits of the free plan—and ended up with two full Notion accounts, then started paying. The value was real, but so was the lock-in and the cost. I kept thinking: what if this could be open, versioned, and shareable?
The idea
I wanted to share more than “here’s my experience.” A lot of my work stays in private Notion, but the mindset—documenting continuously, making it easy for future you and your team—is something I care about. That idea grew stronger because I’ve always liked open-source approaches, public repos, and building in the open.
So the goal became: not only share knowledge, but share a solution that helps others document well and build their own knowledge base.
Now or never
At some point I decided: why not share both the knowledge and the tooling? I wanted something robust, pleasant to use, easy to write in and share—and good enough that others could adopt it.
I wanted a place where:
- You can publish and structure your knowledge
- Others can suggest improvements and contribute
- Everything is versioned and shared
The inspiration
While designing this, I looked at a lot of doc platforms—Docusaurus and others. They’re solid, but I was aiming for something that felt right for my workflow. Then I discovered SigNoz.io. I was impressed by how they structure their docs, blog, and entire site—and that they open-sourced their documentation stack so the community could contribute.
That inspired this project. This knowledge base is built with Next.js, Tailwind CSS, and MDX for content. I kept adding features to make writing and reading better: metadata cards, author photos, terminal-style blocks, Excalidraw diagrams, highlights, and more—all aimed at making documentation clearer and more engaging.
Meet Knowledge Base !
What you get is a documentation site built for developers who think in Markdown and MDX:
- Write in MDX — structure, ordering, and live updates handled for you
- Search and filter — find content by keywords and tags
- Deploy anywhere — e.g. GitHub Pages, with optional analytics (e.g. Cloudflare)
- Extensible — metadata cards, code blocks, diagrams, highlights, and custom components
If you’re curious how it’s built, the repo is open: you can read the source, see the features in action, and reuse or adapt it for your own knowledge base.
Final thoughts
I’m still migrating and reshaping content from my two packed Notion accounts into shareable docs and blog posts here. I’m also iterating on features so this stays a good place to contribute, fork for your own use, or send a PR.
Documenting continuously didn’t just help me in production—it gave me a way to share what I care about with the community. If that resonates with you, feel free to explore the site, fork the project, or drop a contribution. Thanks for reading.