Documentation
Altair is a self-hosted personal operating system for managing knowledge, goals, and resources across everyday life. This site is the canonical reference for how to run it, how to use it, and how to contribute.
Who this is for
These docs assume you are either:
- A user — someone who wants to run Altair for themselves or a small household and would like to understand how to use it day-to-day.
- A self-hoster — someone with a Raspberry Pi, home server, or small VPS who is comfortable with Docker and basic Linux administration.
- A contributor — someone who wants to read the code, propose changes, or help with the roadmap.
If you are evaluating Altair and haven’t landed on whether to try it, the homepage is a better starting point than this page.
How the docs are organized
- Self-hosting — the installation guide. Hardware requirements, Docker Compose setup, database migrations, first-user creation. Start here if you want to get Altair running.
- User guides — how the three domains work in practice. Written for humans, not for the implementation. One guide per domain: Guidance, Knowledge, Tracking.
- API reference — the server’s REST surface. Currently a stub; a full reference will land when the server exposes an OpenAPI specification.
- Contributing — dev setup, conventions, and the spec-driven planning workflow used in the project.
- Roadmap and Changelog — what’s next and what’s shipped.
Status
Altair is under active development. The server, web client, and Android client are working end-to-end. Expect rough edges and breaking changes before v1. ADRs in Context/Decisions/ on GitHub document the architectural commitments the project is working within.
A note on scope
Altair is a personal tool, not a productivity framework. The documentation will not teach you how to set goals, take notes, or manage a household. It will only teach you how to use Altair to do those things once you’ve decided what you want to do.