athensresearch

athens

Clojure2020–2023

athensresearch / athens

athens

Athens is no longer maintainted. Athens was an open-source, collaborative knowledge graph, backed by YC W21

Productivity

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34Distinct people

42Mentions

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6.3KGitHub stars

REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

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What it is

Athens is no longer maintainted. Athens was an open-source, collaborative knowledge graph, backed by YC W21

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

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Also in these discussions

logseq/logseq · linked in 4 of the same discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year42 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2020-05-15 09:09:50 UTC to 2023-02-13 21:46:29 UTC.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges

UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
Period	Start (UTC)	End (exclusive, UTC)	Mentions	Submissions	Comments
2020	2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	17	2	15
2021	2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	21	2	19
2022	2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2	0	2
2023	2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2	1	1

What Hacker News says

42 sources

jgoodhcg·Feb 13, 2023

I think the Roam Research style backlinked knowledge management apps are directly enabled by datascript. Two "copy cats" (not meant to be derogatory) of Roam that are open source are: https://github.com/logseq/logseq https://github.com/athensresearch/athens The underlying in memory datalog style database that can run in the browser that enables these apps https://github.com/tonsky/datascript

In Clojure Turns 15 panel discussion video

alixanderwang·Jan 7, 2023Submission

Athens (open-source Roam Research) is no longer being actively maintained

31 points · Open discussion

prashantsengar·Mar 2, 2022

Have you tried Athens Research? [0] It is open source and everything is stored locally but not in markdown files. You can self-host the desktop app to share notes. [0]: https://github.com/athensresearch/athens

In Write plain text files

bachmeier·Jan 31, 2022

My rule of thumb when someone says "Language X is dying" is to move on. I don't even use Clojure, and I can immediately come up with https://github.com/logseq/logseq and https://github.com/athensresearch/athens as funded companies making popular new products with Clojure.

In Boring Technology Checklist

ceohockey60·Nov 18, 2021Submission

Athens Is 1.0 GA

6 points · Open discussion

tosh·Nov 16, 2021Submission

Athens Research 1.0.0

1 points · Open discussion

shruthibadri·Nov 16, 2021

Athens Research uses a workflowy like UI. It comes with a bunch of other features, but you can ignore those pretty easily. Obsidian with the Outliner plugin is also nice - although Obsidian isn't open source, it is free and all your data is stored locally as markdown files. 1. https://github.com/athensresearch/athens 2. https://github.com/vslinko/obsidian-outliner

In Appflowy – open-source Notion Alternative

DeathArrow·Nov 12, 2021

I cam across two alternatives for Roam Research: Foam. Built on Visual Studio Code and GitHub, Foam is early but already powerful. Write your content in markdown, use [[page]] for internal links, and explore your content with an interactive graph. The Backlinks Explorer lets you find all notes that link to a specific note. Foam also makes it easy to back up your notes on GitHub. [1] Athens. Quite ambitious, Athens aims to offer a full open-source version of Roam. Built with Clojure. It's founder wanted to work for Roam but was rejected because he didn't know Clojure. So he learned Clojure and started writing an open source alternative. Roam was rejected by YC but AThens was accepted. [2] [1] https://foambubble.github.io/foam/ [2] https://github.com/athensresearch/athens

In How to build a second brain as a software developer

xmprt·Oct 17, 2021

I've also heard of Athens [https://github.com/athensresearch/athens#athens] which is similar to Roam and can be self hosted. I haven't compared it to logseq though.

In Obsidian – A knowledge base from a local folder of plain text Markdown files

boolean·Sep 14, 2021

Logseq: https://logseq.com/ (https://github.com/logseq/logseq) Athens: https://github.com/athensresearch/athens

In Ask HN: What are good self-hosted outliner apps like Workflowy and Dynalist?

indiantinker·Sep 10, 2021

I am a design technologist [1], so I end up doing things when specialists are too busy or unavailable or they don't exist. I do research, build prototypes, design interfaces, and even write growth strategies. Over the years, I have to learn things ASAP to get things in place before world breaks loose. I follow an approach that I call : SPOTS. It stands for Survey, Prioritise, Organise, Test, Show. Lets go through it one by one : 1. Survey : Collect all possible things you need to know about a new topic or thing. Make a mind-map. Do not forget to check out academic sources for possible models. Reddit and HN are cool places to look. This should be done in a time boxed manner. 2. Prioritise : Now we bring the goal and see our mind map in context. So, you want to build an app and you know, say, Nuxtjs. How can you do it so you have to acquire

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as little skills as possible. Or you want to write a research protocol for conducting a simple user test for a product. This step will help you find possible ways to reach goal. Now, you have a prioritised way to achieve the goal and maybe have a sense of how things could be. 3. Organise: This step is very important. The prioritised 'knowledge elements' have to be revisited again and again. Using a small notes app or Athens[2] you can make a list of key steps or if its a tutorial, the major steps. In short, take notes. This will help you bring more clarity in terms of various approaches you can use the knowledge elements. Say, you need to use low power mode on ESP32, you have the documentation + sample code and you know how it works. 4. Test ( or Try) : Now you need to keep trying and testing the various arrangements of knowledge elements and what works and what not. Dont get attached to any particular way. Keep figuring out. With code etc it is easier, with research (and human things), test things with friends or cousins. The idea is to be iterative and see if we are able to get to the goal. Iteration is the key. Sometimes you might need new 'knowledge elements' that you might have missed out. 5. Show : This is the most important and something all good humans should do, as philosophers would say, further the epistemological understanding of humans— write a f#$king blog, post a documentation, or answer a stack overflow, heck at least make a tik-tok. This will make sure, if someone gets stuck solving the same problem in the future, your knowledge element will help them. Also, it cements the concepts for you as well. sings "You may say, I am dreamer...But, I am not the only one" [1] http://rohitg.in/portfolio/ or http://rohitg.in [2] https://github.com/athensresearch/athens

In Ask HN: How Do You Learn?

benrbray·Aug 19, 2021

Athens [1] is an even better free and open source alternative, started by someone who was rejected [2] for a Clojure job at Roam! Athens was even accepted to YC [3]. [1] https://github.com/athensresearch/athens [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26316793 [3] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/athens-research

In The Zettelkasten Method (2019)

mariocesar·Aug 1, 2021

I started using https://github.com/athensresearch/athens I quickly fill with lot of information, I miss code feauteres like markdown github fencing ```, but so far is great, searh is fast, adding new data is good, refereces links and back links really adds to the information, and the daily page is useful. I just would like to have more features about code It has a developer mode, where you can run clojuru to query the nodes, I'm starting to use it to create code references between nodes, nothing useeful, but you definitevely can start playing with it

In Why Young Developers Don’t Get Knowledge Graphs

benrbray·Jul 18, 2021

Check out Athens [1]. It's closer to Roam than Notion, but it's free and open source, and they seem to be headed in the right direction: [1] https://github.com/athensresearch/athens

In Designing Synced Blocks

tedmiston·Jul 14, 2021

We can speculate around someone's motivations all day, but no one can speak for this engineer but themself, and it sounds like they would (understandably) prefer to keep private matters private. At the end of the day he probably got an offer more favorable than his current package in some dimension that's important to him. Boring answer but it is what is. Earlier stage often means opportunity for more equity... That said, Roam itself appears really small and only to have just raised 9M ~9 months ago. So they are likely either raising their next round now / imminently. As someone with no horse in the race, I do not think it says anything about Roam itself. The average employee tenure at a startup is ≤ 12 months and I want to say the actual figure is ~9 months so this isn't particularly unusual. One potentially interesting question migh

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t be, does Roam have a non-compete [and will they attempt to enforce it]? But it looks like they are based in SF... so probably not. Another potentially angle is to research the background of the new startup's founders. It looks like Athens' product is open source [1] while Roam's is not. That can be substantial to a lot of the engineers at the end of the day. [1]: https://github.com/athensresearch/athens

In Ask HN: What does it mean if lead engineer moves to competition?

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