Introduction

Glyph is an open-source platform for versioned code documentation. It lets you and your team annotate Git repositories - file by file, commit by commit - directly from your browser.

Think of it as a layer of structured notes that lives alongside your code, evolves with it, and survives every refactor.

The problem Glyph solves

Most teams document their code in three places:

1. Inside the code - comments and docstrings, lost when files are moved or rewritten
2. In a wiki - separate from the code, gets stale within weeks
3. In tribal knowledge - leaves the team with the engineer

Glyph attaches documentation directly to a specific commit of a specific file. When you open a file in Glyph, you see the version of the docs that was current at that point in history. When the code changes, your old docs aren't lost - they remain visible on the older commit.

Core principles

• Documentation is versioned - every doc is tied to a (file_path, commit_sha) pair
• Code references are first-class - annotate exact line ranges and reference them inline ({{my-ref}})
• Multi-source - import projects from GitHub, GitLab, any Git URL, or upload local folders
• Self-hosted - your data stays on your infrastructure, runs on Docker

What you get

• Side-by-side code viewer + WYSIWYG / Markdown editor
• File tree with branch and commit navigation
• Full-text search across files and documentation (Meilisearch)
• Workspaces with role-based access (admin, developer, viewer)
• Email or link-based member invitations
• Light and dark themes

When to use Glyph

Glyph fits best when you have:

• Large codebases that new contributors need to onboard onto
• Critical legacy code where the original authors are gone
• Internal libraries that are reused across teams
• Compliance or audit requirements that demand documented decisions

Next step

Head to Installation to set up Glyph on your machine.