Minds together
A shared second brain, with AI that sees only what you can.
Your team's notes stay as plain markdown files on each person's computer and sync live through a service we run in London. Each person's own AI can read and write them, within that person's permissions.
Invitation only for now. Free for pilot members.
- Plain .md files
- Google or Microsoft sign-in
- Hosted in London
- macOS first
The idea
AI is only as good as the context you give it. synoia is where your team's context lives, inside a boundary you can explain.
synoia is said “sin-OY-a”, from the Greek syn, together, and nous, mind.
Files you own
Every vault is a folder of plain .md files on your computer. Point Obsidian at it and everything is there.
One live copy for the team
Edits sync through our service in London as you type, and you can see who else is in a note.
Your AI, your permissions
Connect Claude, ChatGPT or any MCP client. It reads and writes what you can, and nothing else.
Who it's for
For teams where privacy, ownership and security matter.
Firms that hold their clients' knowledge and have to say where it lives. Defence and regulated firms are among them, and so is any team that would rather own its notes than rent them.
You answer to clients
Someone will ask where your knowledge is kept and who can see it. You want a one-sentence answer.
You use AI every day
You want it working over the team's shared notes, and seeing no further than the person who asked.
You work with partners
You need to share some things with people outside the firm and keep the rest to yourselves.
You like Obsidian
You want the same plain files and links, with your whole team in them at once.
Why it exists
Personal tools don't share well. Shared tools keep your knowledge on their terms.
Personal vaults
Yours, but mostly solo
Obsidian gives one person a superb second brain. Its shared vaults give everyone the same rights to all of it, for up to 20 people, and two people can't edit a note at the same time.
Cloud workspaces
Shared, but in their format
Notion and Confluence are built for teams. Your pages live in the vendor's own format, usually in the vendor's cloud.
Document libraries
Approved, but made for documents
SharePoint and Kahootz hold documents well. In our experience, the notes, decisions and links between them end up somewhere else.
synoia keeps the files on your computers and shares them live with the people you choose. Each person's AI works inside the same boundary.
How it works
Everyone keeps a copy. One service keeps them in step.
Notes are files
Each person's computer holds the vault as a folder of plain markdown. The app works on those files directly.
The service keeps everyone in step
Edits travel through our service in London. If you work offline, what you wrote is sent when you reconnect, and every device ends up with the same document.
You choose who sees what
Share a vault, a folder or a single note with people, teams or guests. Restrict a folder to the people who need it. A picture has the access of the folder it sits in.
Your AI works inside your permissions
Connect your own AI. It can write wherever you can. Every write is saved in your name, checked against the latest version of the note, and logged.
What you get
The core of a second brain, built for a team.
Write in markdown
A live-preview editor with Obsidian-style links, tags, properties, callouts, tables and diagrams.
Find and connect
Backlinks, full-text search and a graph of how your notes connect. The graph also works from the keyboard.
Version history
Notes keep their earlier versions, so you can get back what changed.
Organisations, teams and guests
A model that works like Slack. One sign-in reaches every vault you belong to, including vaults you share with partner firms.
Google or Microsoft sign-in
No passwords to leak. Nobody signs up on their own: people join by invitation.
Leave whenever you like
A vault removed from synoia stays a folder of markdown files on your computer. Obsidian, or any text editor, opens it.
Straight answers
What we claim, and what we don't.
Written for the person who has to answer a client's security questions. If something isn't true yet, we say so.
We claim
- Your notes are plain files on your computers, and you can leave with them.
- The service runs on AWS in London, behind Cloudflare. Backups are encrypted and kept for 35 days.
- Sign-in is Google or Microsoft only, by invitation.
- Your AI reaches only what you can. Its writes are saved in your name and logged.
We don't claim
- Sovereign AI. What your AI reads goes to your AI provider, under your terms with them.
- That we can't read your notes. Our staff don't, but the service can technically read what it stores, and we won't pretend otherwise.
- A certification or an independent penetration test for synoia. Neither has happened yet.
- That it suits material a contract or a client requires you to keep off commercial cloud services.
Pricing
Free for the pilot. Priced from real running costs after that.
Pilot
FreeFor pilot members, by invitation.
- Your organisation, with its teams and guests
- Your own AI connected
- A direct line to the people building it
After the pilot
Priced after the pilotPricing is set with the pilot's first months of real running costs.
- The same product, for any team
- Help getting started, if you want it
- A server for your organisation alone
Compare
Side by side, including where the other tool wins.
Each comparison says where the other tool is the better choice. For some teams it is.
Give your team one shared mind.
The pilot is free and by invitation. Tell us about your team and what you'd use synoia for.