Today we are releasing Clear Ideas Community Edition, an open-source, self-hosted foundation for secure file sharing and AI-ready collaboration.
You can learn more on the Community Edition page, or go directly to the Clear Ideas Community Edition repository on GitHub.
Community Edition gives technical teams a practical way to run the self-hosted core of Clear Ideas. You can clone the repo, follow the quickstart, create sites, upload documents, preview files, invite users, review activity, and test AI-ready content access with your own provider keys.
The hosted Clear Ideas platform remains the complete managed product. It adds richer client collaboration, advanced governance, document signing, repeatable AI workflows, managed AI capabilities, product support, and the operational work that comes with running a production platform for professional teams.
What Is Included
Community Edition includes the essentials for a self-hosted workspace: passwordless email-code authentication, users and groups, site roles and invitations, folders and file uploads, browser previews, local search, activity logging, simple analytics, scheduled digest notifications, scoped MCP access keys, and optional site-scoped AI chat with your own provider keys. The repository includes a quickstart for running it locally.
Community Edition is released under AGPL-3.0 and is designed for teams that want a clear view into how the self-hosted collaboration layer works.
When to Use Community Edition
Community Edition is a good fit for technical evaluators, self-hosters, consultants, fractional CTOs, IT teams, and security-minded operators who want to understand the foundation directly.
It is useful when you want to evaluate the architecture, run a focused internal workspace, or test AI-ready document access with your own provider keys. It is also useful when your team is comfortable operating the infrastructure behind a self-hosted application.
That operating model is important. Community Edition gives you self-hosting and source access. Your team is responsible for running it.
When to Use Hosted Clear Ideas
Hosted Clear Ideas is the better fit when clients, auditors, investors, partners, or other external stakeholders depend on the workspace.
The hosted product includes the broader product surface: managed hosting, product support, advanced organization policy controls, expanded analytics, advanced client collaboration workflows, enterprise identity options, document signing, hosted AI workflow automation, managed AI capabilities, and production operations.
That distinction keeps the product easier to understand. Community Edition is the focused self-hosted core. Hosted Clear Ideas is the complete managed product for professional teams working with sensitive documents.
Secure Collaboration Before AI Workflows
AI adoption inside professional teams is moving quickly, but many teams still start with workarounds. Files get emailed around. PDFs get dropped into general-purpose AI tools. Client context gets copied into places that were never designed to become systems of record.
Clear Ideas starts from the collaboration layer. Documents, permissions, search, activity records, and AI access should live together, especially when the work involves sensitive information.
Community Edition makes the self-hosted foundation easier to evaluate. Hosted Clear Ideas builds on that foundation with the complete product experience.
Getting Started
The fastest way to try Community Edition is through the repository.
Visit the Clear Ideas Community Edition repository on GitHub, clone the project, and follow the quick-start instructions in the README.
For a higher-level overview of what is included, what is not included, and when to use hosted Clear Ideas instead, visit the Clear Ideas Community Edition page.
If you self-host tools for small firms, professional-services teams, or internal knowledge workflows, we would especially like your feedback.