# zcag/tela [Health: Active]

**Category:** 🧠 Knowledge & Memory  
**Repository:** https://github.com/zcag/tela  
**GitHub Stars:** 61  
**npm Downloads (last month):** 224  
**Views:** 3  
**Installs:** 0  
**Upvotes:** 0  
**Directory Page:** https://allmcps.com/mcp/zcag-tela

## Description
Self-hostable, markdown-native team wiki with a built-in MCP server: agents search, read, and write your wiki pages (ranked Postgres full-text + semantic search, backlink traversal). Plus Atlas, which auto-generates a cited, coverage-checked wiki from your git repos and Jira. Go + Postgres. npx tela-mcp

## Claude Desktop Quick Installation
Install path detected from listing signals. Uses `npx` (confidence: high):

```json
"mcpServers": {
  "tela": {
    "command": "npx",
    "args": ["-y","tela-mcp"],
    "env": {
      "TELA_PUBLIC_BASE_URL": "",
      "TELA_SHARE_SECRET": "",
      "TELA_API_KEY_SECRET": "",
      "TELA_PG_PASSWORD": ""
    }
  }
}
```

**Requires environment variables:** `TELA_PUBLIC_BASE_URL`, `TELA_SHARE_SECRET`, `TELA_API_KEY_SECRET`, `TELA_PG_PASSWORD` — the values above are empty placeholders; fill in real credentials before running (see the repository for what each one is for).

## Documentation

## What zcag/tela MCP server does

The zcag/tela MCP server exposes a Tela wiki to compatible agents. Agents can search the knowledge base, read pages, and author or update pages through the same system used by people in Tela’s web interface. Wiki content remains canonical Markdown in the `pages.body` field, so agent-written material is stored in the repository’s primary document format rather than a proprietary block structure.

Tela is a self-hostable team wiki backed by Go and PostgreSQL. In addition to agent access, the broader application provides nested page organization, comments, backlinks, revision history, live collaboration, and browser-based editing. These features matter when an agent’s output needs to become part of an actively maintained team knowledge base.

## How it works

The MCP interface is part of the Tela backend and is available at `/api/mcp`; it is not described as a separate add-on service. Claude, Cursor, and other agents can use the endpoint to interact with the wiki. Tool permissions can be scoped so that write access is controlled per tool.

Search uses ranked PostgreSQL full-text search without requiring an embedding service. Tela can also use `pgvector` for semantic retrieval and documentation question-answering when an embedder is configured. The supplied deployment example uses Ollama with the `qwen3-embedding:0.6b` model, but semantic search is optional and full-text search remains available without it.

Tela also includes Atlas, a documentation engine that can turn existing source artifacts into maintained wiki pages. The provided description identifies Git repositories and Jira as Atlas inputs and says that generated pages include citations and coverage checks.

## Setup and configuration

The zcag/tela MCP server can be run through the published `tela-mcp` npm package with `npx`. For a complete self-hosted Tela deployment, the repository provides a Docker Compose stack and a Make-based quickstart. The documented flow clones the repository, runs `make setup`, configures `deploy/.env`, and starts the services with `make up`.

The self-hosted stack requires Docker with Compose and Make. Required configuration includes the public instance URL, a secret for signed share-link cookies, a secret for personal access tokens, and the bundled PostgreSQL password. The application runs migrations on first boot and provides a setup wizard unless bootstrap administrator credentials are configured in advance.

The stack is exposed through Caddy on port 8780 by default. Tela can instead use an external PostgreSQL database by setting its full database URL. The repository also documents managed deployment options and a hosted free tier, but the MCP server’s deployment and authentication details should be checked against the target Tela installation.

## Tools and capabilities

The zcag/tela MCP server supports these documented agent tasks:

- Search wiki content with ranked full-text retrieval.
- Use optional semantic retrieval through `pgvector` and an embedder.
- Read existing wiki pages.
- Write or author wiki pages with scoped write permissions.
- Traverse backlinks when navigating related documentation.
- Work with Markdown that remains canonical in the database.

Use it for repository or team documentation workflows where agents need both retrieval and controlled authoring. It is less suitable if the required source is only an external system not connected to Tela, or if a deployment cannot provide the PostgreSQL-backed Tela application.

## Limitations and notes

Semantic search is not enabled by default in the documented setup; it requires the optional embedder profile and additional configuration. Full-text search works without that component. The self-hosted deployment also depends on stable signing secrets: changing the share secret invalidates existing share cookies, while changing the API key secret invalidates personal access tokens.

The zcag/tela MCP server is part of a larger wiki application, so running only the npm launcher may not provide a knowledge base by itself. An accessible Tela instance and its MCP endpoint are still required for meaningful agent operations. The repository is licensed under AGPL-3.0.

_Full upstream README: https://allmcps.com/mcp/zcag-tela/readme_