Choose Doco when
- MIT licensing is required for the complete application.
- Agents need stable block addresses and explicit stale-write failures.
- The same live document must be accessible through UI, MCP, CLI, and REST.
Honest comparison · Doco and Outline
Doco vs Outline
Choose Outline for a polished, mature team wiki with strong administration and integrations. Choose Doco when MIT licensing and an agent-facing block contract with stable IDs, If-Match, atomic batches, and Markdown round-trip are decisive.
Direct answerChoose for the job,
Choose for the job,
not the feature count
The products overlap, but their centers of gravity are different. Start with the source of truth and the people or agents who must maintain it.
Choose Outline when
- You need a polished team wiki with mature administration and integrations.
- Outline's collections, search, permissions, and hosted experience already match the team.
- Business Source License terms are acceptable for the intended deployment.
At a glance
The operating differences
| Dimension | Doco | Outline |
|---|---|---|
| Primary job | Human-agent collaborative documents | Fast collaborative team knowledge base |
| Data ownership | MIT licensed and self-hostable | Self-hostable under current BSL 1.1 terms |
| Human collaboration | Yjs collaboration, offline browser state, block comments | Mature realtime wiki, collections and permissions |
| Agent access | 29-tool MCP, CLI and versioned REST block writes | Built-in MCP plus broad REST API |
| Content model | Stable-addressed rich-text blocks | Markdown-compatible collaborative documents |
| Best fit | Teams building agent-maintained operational knowledge | Growing teams that want a polished conventional wiki |
Outline is stronger when
Outline is stronger as a mature conventional team wiki: polished navigation, administration, collections, integrations, and a long-developed hosted experience. It also now provides a built-in MCP server.
Doco is stronger when
Doco uses the permissive MIT license and makes agent safety part of the core data contract: stable block IDs, canonical versions, If-Match writes, atomic batches, idempotency, and rollback.
Migration
Moving from Outline
Migration is medium effort. Markdown content is portable, but collections, permissions, comments, integrations, and administration settings need an explicit mapping rather than a blind bulk import.
- 01
Export representative collections and documents to Markdown with attachments.
- 02
Map Outline collections into Doco knowledge bases and nested folders.
- 03
Import content, then verify tables, images, links, comments, and heading structure.
- 04
Recreate members and permissions; validate an agent read and protected write before cutover.
Run a representative trial first. Keep the original export until links, attachments, permissions, tables, and a restore have all been verified.
Bottom line
Use the smaller truth
Outline is the safer default for teams seeking a mature wiki. Doco is the more open and agent-specialized choice when block-safe machine maintenance is a primary requirement.
01Is Outline open source?
Its current repository uses Business Source License 1.1, whose own text says it is not an open-source license before the change date. It is source-available and self-hostable within those terms.
02Does Outline support MCP?
Yes. Recent Outline releases include a built-in MCP server. Doco differs by coupling MCP tools to stable block IDs and explicit document versions.
03Which is easier for a normal team wiki?
Outline is generally more mature and polished for a conventional team wiki. Doco is narrower and optimized for human-agent document operations.