Synapse

Synapse is a self-hosted AI workspace runtime built by Zhipu AI and released under the Apache License 2.0. Rather than treating chat as a thin interface over an isolated bot, Synapse makes the conversation itself the collaboration boundary — humans, platform-native actors, and bridged remote agents all work in the same thread. The project is in an early design and implementation phase, with schemas and runtime contracts still subject to change.

What It Is

Synapse is a conversation-centric runtime for digital teammates. The core idea is that a conversation is not a chat log in front of a bot — it is the runtime boundary where participants, transcript visibility, actor sessions, wakeups, and memory handoff are all scoped. The platform supports four kinds of participants in a single thread: workspace members, native actors (role-based AI teammates), bridged remote agents (external runtimes like Claude Code or Codex CLI), and external IM identities. Everything those participants can touch — plugins, skills, devices, sandboxes, event sources, memory — is governed at the workspace layer through explicit, revocable grants tracked in a single workspace_resource_grants ledger.

Architecture and Core Model

Synapse separates its runtime into distinct subsystems around a conversation core:

• Conversation and session runtime — Conversations, participants, conversation items, actor sessions, and durable session wakeups define the collaboration model. Model context is compiled from canonical items into shared and private archive chains plus a live tail, bounded by compaction that never rewrites history.
• Runtimes and resources — Paired devices (desktop, Linux server, cloud Docker host) and sandboxes are both runtimes under one supertype, exposing grantable capabilities including filesystem, command line, browser (Chrome DevTools), and computer use.
• Access control — Every resource type is authorized against a single grants ledger, with interactive consume-once approvals for sensitive calls. Approving a blocked call replays the exact original call server-side.
• Memory subsystem — Memory lives in permissioned memory spaces shared via grants. Retrieval combines lexical indexing and embeddings; long conversations are archived verbatim rather than summarized away.
• Pluggable providers — Embedding, OCR, document extraction, transcription, and real-time ASR resolve through env-selected providers (cloud APIs or self-hosted sidecars) and default to none or built-in implementations.
• Transport and automation — Eight IM transports (Feishu/Lark, WeChat, WeCom, DingTalk, QQ, Telegram, WhatsApp Cloud API, WhatsApp web protocol) bind external chats to the same conversation runtime. Schedules, custom webhooks, and GitHub/GitLab events wake conversations through the same durable session wakeups as human messages.

Deployment Model

Synapse is designed for self-hosting on a single Ubuntu host using Docker Compose. The repo ships with Dockerized PostgreSQL, Redis, API, desktop web, nginx (TLS entrypoint), mobile web, and Certbot for Let's Encrypt. Optional self-hosted provider sidecars for embedding, OCR, document extraction, transcription, and real-time ASR are available as Compose profiles. The quick-start path requires Node.js 22 and Docker Compose; the mobile client (Expo Router) lives in a separate package and supports iOS, Android, and web targets.

What's in the Repository

The monorepo (TypeScript, Apache 2.0) contains:

• packages/api — Fastify API, orchestration runtime, chat, memory, files, automation, plugins, devices, and IM
• packages/web-next — Next.js desktop web app and workspace dashboard
• packages/mobile-app — Expo Router mobile app
• packages/device-runtime — Device runtime with filesystem, command-line, browser, and computer-use capabilities
• packages/remote-agent-daemon — Machine-side daemon for bridging external runtimes such as Codex CLI or Claude Code
• subprojects/cli-anything — CLI catalog (HKUDS/CLI-Anything) included as a git submodule; the device runtime probes each CLI's prerequisites and exposes only tools that can actually run

Current Status and Roadmap

The GitHub repository notes that Synapse is in an early design and implementation phase, with backward compatibility for old data not yet guaranteed. The project had 470 stars and 31 forks as of the last recorded update. Planned roadmap items include cross-workspace collaboration (sharing covers discovery and rosters today; planned: shared actors executing with destination-workspace grants and conversations spanning workspaces), standardized sandbox environment profiles, and a virtual-filesystem projection for browser and computer-use runtimes.