Outline vs SiYuan
Side-by-side trajectory, velocity, and editorial themes.
Outline is steadily polishing its wiki while quietly opening up to AI assistants via MCP.
Outline ships at a measured cadence focused on editor and collaboration polish: task-list and table refinements, request-access flows, public document subscriptions, and passkeys. The standout thread is a meaningfully expanded MCP server that lets AI assistants patch, move, and delete documents and manage inline comments, plus integrations like GitLab and Draw.io.
The core product is mature and evolving incrementally, but the MCP investment points to Outline positioning itself as an AI-operable knowledge base rather than just a human wiki. Collaboration features like access requests and subscriptions suggest a push toward broader, less-managed readership.
Expect continued incremental editor improvements alongside a deeper MCP surface, making Outline a knowledge source that external AI agents can both read and edit.
SiYuan rides its 3.7 overhaul with rapid alpha polish on mobile and cross-platform
SiYuan is an open-source, local-first knowledge base. Its 3.7 line was a throughout renewal — a redesigned UI, a kernel plugin system, and a CLI — and the feed since has been a fast cadence of alpha releases (3.7.1, 3.7.2) grinding on mobile editing and cross-platform quirks across Android, HarmonyOS, iOS, and the Microsoft Store build.
The work is consolidating the 3.7 overhaul along three lines: extensibility (kernel plugins), cross-platform parity (HarmonyOS now treated as a first-class target alongside Android and iOS), and mobile editing polish. The 'step toward intelligence' language hints at AI features, but the concrete shipping is platform breadth and extensibility.
Expect 3.7.2 to stabilize out of alpha with continued mobile and HarmonyOS fixes; the kernel plugin system points toward a growing third-party plugin ecosystem as the next surface.
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