Know Keeper: My open source replacement for Omnivore

Getting information from the internet is like drinking from a fire hose. You get wet but you are still thirsty. These wise words from Cliff Stoll are in particular true when it comes to endless email subscriptions and blog feeds. Following them all can be a time-consuming black hole. So, how do we turn this sprinkler system into a targeted information sprint?

Omnivore: used to me my go-to solution to solve this issue. Think of it as a central hub for all your blog articles. It provides RSS fees, subscribes to newsletters, and presents everything in a clean, organized app. No more frantic bouncing between websites, just a curated feed waiting to be explored. You could also highlight key passages, delete what doesn’t resonate, and archive articles for future reference. All within the app, all effortlessly.

Unfortunately Omnivore has been closed down. It’s open source but it requires a lot of Docker-Vodoo magic to get it up and running as a self-hosted solution and it is unclear if the community is able to sustain that solution.

The key features I liked from this app are:

• Easy to use
• No complicated cloud-based backend
• Support for RSS feeds
• Support for email newsletters in the same app
• Support for Read It Later integration to store bookmarks
• Highlighting important text
• Export your highlights in Markdown format (to then be used e.g. in LogSeq)

So why not write such an app on my own? The one thing I did not like about Omnivore is the the quite complex backend that makes it quite difficult to setup and use.

Know Keeper uses a simple email account that you can get for free from a variety of providers as a backend. This account is used to store URLs that you want to read later as well as subscribe to newsletters:

At the moment the app is a very early phase of testing and I would appreciate any feedback. The source code can be found here.

If you want to join the test bed group shoot me a mail and I will add you to the list.