Installation

Notarium ships as a single self-contained image: one Node process serves the REST API, the MCP endpoint for agents, and the compiled web interface on a single port (3000 by default). No external services — no database, no message broker, no separate search engine — are required: the knowledge engine runs inside that same process. All state lives in a single /data volume: the metadata database, derived indexes, your Markdown files (the source of truth), and export artifacts.

Run the image

The fastest path is to spin up a container from the prebuilt image:

docker run -d --name notarium \
  -p 3000:3000 \
  -v notarium-data:/data \
  docouno/notarium:latest

A single /data volume holds all state: the metadata database, indexes, your notes, and export artifacts. There's nothing else to set — port 3000 and the data path /data are already baked into the image. The volume survives recreating the container; the port to the left of :3000 can be changed to any free one.

You don't need to append a command to docker run: the image's entry point is the built-in notarium CLI, and by default it runs start. The same CLI carries the operator commands — backup, restore, admin, healthcheck, version. See Image CLI.

Using Docker Compose

For an instance you intend to keep, a compose file is easier to edit and to keep under version control, and restart brings the container back after a host reboot.

services:
  notarium:
    image: docouno/notarium:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    volumes:
      - notarium-data:/data

volumes:
  notarium-data:

Save it as compose.yaml and bring it up with docker compose up -d. The named volume notarium-data lives independently of the container: docker compose down leaves it in place, and only an explicit docker volume rm deletes it.

First run

Open http://localhost:3000 and you'll be greeted by the first-run setup screen. By default the instance runs in password mode, and the first visitor creates the owner — the single account with administrator rights and ownership of the spaces it creates. There's no preset password; once the owner registers, setup closes for good. For more on the modes, see Authentication.

Data volumes

Guard the volume itself: lose it and your data goes with it. If the indexes in /data/engine are lost, they rebuild from the files, but the metadata database (/data/meta.db — history, users, access) and the notes themselves (/data/spaces) can't be restored from anywhere — backing them up is mandatory. For how to take a verified backup without stopping the service, see Backup and restore.

Building from source

If you're working with the Notarium repository, the single entry point for Docker is make:

cp .env.example .env   # defaults work — nothing to fill in
make up                # prod image locally → http://localhost:3000
make dev               # dev stack with hot-reload (HMR)

Handy commands: make logs (logs), make ps (status), make down (stop and remove), make sh (shell in the container).

Registry-free install (air-gapped)

To deploy into an isolated environment, the image can be moved as a file, without access to a registry:

make image                              # build the image
make save                               # export to notarium-<version>.tar.gz
# move the archive to the target host, then:
docker load < notarium-<version>.tar.gz # load the image

Then run it with your own compose/.env — the registry coordinate isn't baked into the image.

The next step is to tailor the instance to your needs: see Configuration.