Blinko

Why deploy blinko on Render?

Blinko is a self-hosted, AI-assisted note-taking application for capturing and searching personal notes. It solves the problem of quickly storing short ideas and retrieving them later using AI-powered search over your own data.

This template wires Blinko to managed Postgres and attaches a persistent disk for app data—no manual connection strings or volume configuration needed. One click deploys the full stack with a generated NEXTAUTH_SECRET and public HTTPS endpoint, skipping the Docker Compose setup and TLS provisioning you'd handle yourself. You get Render's managed Postgres backups and can scale the web service independently as your note collection grows.

Architecture

What you can build

After deploying, you'll have a running instance of Blinko—a self-hosted note-taking app where you can capture short notes, search across them, and optionally connect your own AI provider for retrieval—all at a public HTTPS URL. Your notes and files persist in a managed Postgres database and attached disk, so nothing is lost between deploys. The template handles auth secrets and database wiring automatically, so you can create an account and start using it immediately.

Key features

• Managed Postgres wiring: DATABASE_URL is automatically injected from Render Postgres via fromDatabase, requiring no manual connection string configuration.
• Persistent disk storage: A 2 GB persistent disk mounted at /app/.blinko preserves uploaded files and app data across deploys and restarts.
• Auto-generated auth secret: NEXTAUTH_SECRET is generated by Render on first deploy, eliminating manual secret creation for session signing.
• Runtime URL injection: entrypoint.sh dynamically builds NEXTAUTH_URL and NEXT_PUBLIC_BASE_URL from RENDER_EXTERNAL_HOSTNAME, avoiding hardcoded URLs for the default deploy.
• Single-instance vertical scaling: Persistent disk requires numInstances: 1, so scaling is done by changing the web service plan rather than adding replicas.

Use cases

• Solo developer captures fleeting ideas in a private, searchable note app
• Freelancer builds a personal knowledge base without trusting third-party services
• Small startup team shares quick notes in a lightweight internal scratchpad
• Tinkerer experiments with AI-powered note search using their own model provider

What's included

Next steps

1. Open https://.onrender.com/health in your browser — You should see a JSON response showing {"status":"ok"}
2. Visit the main Blinko URL and create your first account — You should land on the Blinko dashboard where you can start capturing notes
3. Test note creation by writing a quick note and refreshing the page — Your note should persist and appear in the note list after refresh

Resources

• Blinko official site