Gnosis

Have you ever used Confluence? I mean, really tried to use it? I mean, a lot of companies have it. It can be configured in a million different ways, it can store just about anything, and it integrates with AllTheThings.

And it's abysmal.

Authoring is a pain. The WSIWYG is terrible. Versioning is kludgy. Collaborating? Forget it. Editing tools, what editing tools? And, worst of all: it's hard to find things. It's like a wooly mammoth in modern-day Los Angeles: big, clumsy, entirely unsuited to its environment, and surrounded by tarpits and elevated freeways.

Gnosis is about simplicity. It's based on 3 ideals:

authoring should be easy, for both techies and luddites;
finding information must be straightforward, quick, and accurate; and
sane defaults save lives.

I think we can all agree on the first two principles. The third may be somewhat controversial, so...

Sane Defaults Save Lives

Look, we are all individuals. Everyone - and every company - is a vessel unto themself. But why, oh why, do we have this INSANE driver to "do the same shit our own way"? Now, don't get me wrong... There is value in heterogeneity. I am a firm believer in diversity of opinions, survival of the fittest, and all that jazz. But come on, do we have to reinvent the wheel every time we buy a new car? So, let's save our brains some cycles to use on important things (think: solve world hunger, interstellar travel, and figuring out why we started to listen to Jenny McCarthy about ANYTHING. But I digres...).

Getting Started

At the moment, this is a standard Rails 3-step:

Clone the repo
Run bundle install
Run bundle exec rails db:setup

Out of the box the DATABASE_URL is set to use your local Postgres instance (version 12.x or higher is required). If you so desire, you can run a database via Docker Compose (docker-compose up); you'll want to copy .env.{development,test}.local.sample to .env.{development,test}.local.

Usage

There are 2 ways to do this, the Easy Way:tm: and the Hard Way:tm:

The Easy Way:tm:

It's pretty simple: go to https://gnos.is, register your organization and invite people via email. You'll need a credit card for that register part, FYI. So let's say your organization if "Foo Associates" (I know, not original: see above); you'll be assigned a subdomain, https://foo_associates.gnos.is. Under that there are 3 main entrypoints:

/manage - allows privileged users to manage the organization; you know, stuff like inviting people, etc.
/content - a user interface to your content: stuff like dashboards, etc.
/browse - contains your org's files. More on this below.

If you choose the Easy Way:tm:, you can delete this repository and go on your merry way. Enjoy!

The Hard Way:tm:

Ugh. Someone always wants to go the hard way. Whatever.

If you're not sure what these steps mean, you're in the wrong section (hint: go here). Have fun stormin' the castle!

Set up an S3 bucket. You'll probably also want an AWS IAM user for this application.
Configure this application to be hosted somewhere; you'll need to provide the following environment variables:

GNOSIS_AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
GNOSIS_AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

Provision a database; configure the app to use that database via the DATABASE_URL environment variable.
Provision and configure an Auth0-compatible authz/authn solution. Configure the app to use it via TO_BE_DETERMINED.
Provision an elasticsearch cluster. Configure the app using ELASTICSEARCH_URL.
Deploy the app. There's a Dockerfile; that'd be the suggested mechanism, but do whatever you want.
Run bundle exec rails gnosis:provision and follow the prompts.

adamstrickland / gnosis