In the world of open source software, few stories are as remarkable as the resurrection of Trilium Notes. What began as a community fork of an abandoned project has evolved into a powerful collaboration between passionate maintainers and cutting-edge AI tooling.
This case study explores how TriliumNext not only revived a beloved knowledge management application but also leveraged Dosu's triaging capabilities to allow them to effectively maintain the project as a small team.
The Backstory: From Abandonment to Revival
Trilium Notes started as the brainchild of Zadam (Adam), a developer who created what many considered one of the best hierarchical note-taking applications available. With its rich feature set including hierarchical note organization, scripting capabilities, and self-hosting options, Trilium had attracted over 22,000 stars on GitHub and a dedicated user base.
However, after two years of active development, Zadam announced that Trilium would transition into maintenance mode. As Elian Doran, who would later become TriliumNext's lead maintainer, explained:
"After two years of using it, I was kind of disappointed about the fact that it was going into maintenance, and not seeing regular updates. So I said, okay, let's do something about it. And we did."
The Fork and the Community Response
In January 2024, when Trilium entered maintenance mode, a group of community members led by Elian Doran created TriliumNext as a fork, determined not to let the application "fade into memory."
The fork quickly gained traction, accumulating 2.7k stars as the community rallied behind the continued development. However, the team had bigger ambitions – they wanted to reunite with the original repository and its substantial 22,000-star community.
The Unprecedented Repository Recovery
What happened next is likely unprecedented in open source history. The TriliumNext team embarked on a persistent campaign to contact the original creator, Zadam, who had put the project in maintenance mode and went to focus on other things.
"We emailed him and emailed him and emailed him, and we went through all the commits to find all of his unique emails that he had signed the commits with. We're like, okay. We're gonna find it. We found one of his corporate email addresses and kept reaching out." Their persistence paid off. After nearly a year of attempts, Zadam responded and agreed to transfer the original repository to TriliumNext. As it turned out, the original creator had been dealing with major life changes – having a child and work pressures – and was actually pleased with how the project had evolved under new leadership.
The repository transfer represents a rare victory in open source continuity, allowing TriliumNext to consolidate their 2.7k fork community with the original, now 30.2k-star repository.
Enter Dosu: The Issue Game Changer
While managing a growing open source project, the TriliumNext team discovered Dosu through its usage on the LangChain repository. Jon Fuller, who handles DevOps and security for TriliumNext, was initially impressed: "I saw it on LangChain... I was like, holy shit. This bot isn't useless..."
Elian was initially skeptical about AI tools for GitHub management, but his perspective changed dramatically when he witnessed Dosu's capabilities firsthand: "What first really impressed me was when it answered something I couldn't answer from the top of my mind. It saw duplicate issues where, at the glance, they didn't look like duplicates. But when I had a longer look, they actually were! It was probably better than what I would have initially replied with."
Once they implemented Dosu, it transformed TriliumNext's development workflow in several crucial ways:
1. Stress Reduction and Burnout Prevention
The psychological impact cannot be overstated. As Jon explained: "If you wake up to 20 new [issues] you're gonna wanna go back in your hole and not even open up a browser. But if you wake up to one and nineteen closed, you're like, alright. I don't suck at what I'm doing that much."
This directly addresses one of the biggest challenges in open source maintenance – the overwhelming nature of issue management that leads to maintainer burnout. The original Trilium creator's experience exemplifies this problem: "When Zadam... put Trillium in maintenance mode, he said he was gonna constantly release library updates. He never did. Never came back. When Elian spoke to him, he basically said, like, I didn't wanna come back to all those issues."
2. Quality Improvement Through Context
Dosu's ability to maintain context across the entire project history has proven invaluable: "It goes and finds [old issues], and it... includes this context. It's wild. It'll use as context issues that were opened a year ago that I completely forgot the moment I closed the tab."
This capability is particularly important for projects with extensive histories. TriliumNext has recently leveraged this by having Dosu process the 887 historical issues from the original repository to identify duplicates and provide better organization.
3. Community Engagement Enhancement
Perhaps most surprisingly, users have begun actively engaging with Dosu as if it were a human team member. Elian noted: "Even recently, I have seen, like, two or three people that actually interact with the bot, and that was really surprising. So they were asking him questions, how to proceed with this, and the answers are actually pretty good."
Technical Implementation and Features
TriliumNext's use of Dosu extends beyond basic issue triage:
- Automated labeling: Dosu automatically categorizes issues and pull requests
- Duplicate detection: Identifies similar issues across different time periods
- Documentation suggestions: Provides recommendations for documentation gaps
- Multi-language support: Handles issues in various languages from the global community
The team has also enabled additional features like PR size labeling and is exploring the documentation generation capabilities that Dosu offers.
Lessons from Trilium for the Open Source Community
The TriliumNext story offers several important insights for open source maintainers and the broader community:
Persistence in Community Building
The successful recovery of the original repository demonstrates the power of persistent, respectful community engagement. The team's methodical approach to tracking down the original creator through commit history shows how determination can overcome seemingly impossible obstacles.
AI as an Enabler, Not a Replacement
Dosu's role in the TriliumNext ecosystem illustrates how AI can augment human capabilities rather than replace them. The tool handles routine tasks, allowing maintainers like Elian to focus on feature development and architectural improvements.
The Importance of Mental Health in Open Source
The story highlights how tools like Dosu can address the mental health challenges that plague open source maintainers. By reducing the overwhelming nature of issue management, AI tools can help prevent the burnout that leads to project abandonment.
Looking Forward: The Future of AI-Assisted Development
TriliumNext's collaboration with Dosu represents a glimpse into the future of open source development. With Dosu recently processing nearly 900 historical Trilium issues and continuing to expand their use of AI-assisted development tools, TriliumNext serves as a model for how traditional open source workflows can evolve, and how tools like Dosu can help combat open source burnout.
As Elian concluded about their Dosu experience: "It gives me more time to work on features... And honestly, it also reduces stress. Right? Because if you see, for example, a lot of bugs, even duplicate bugs, you start to think why do we have so many bugs, like ‘woe is me’ right? But then to see that they've been solved automatically overnight by Dosu while I’m sleeping, that's really something."
TriliumNext continues to develop actively, with the consolidated repository now serving as the official home for Trilium Notes development. The project welcomes contributors and users interested in building the future of personal knowledge management tools.
And if you'd like to use Dosu for your internal knowledge base or OSS project, please do, and let us know what you think of it on Discord!