head to head · open source
OpenViking vs yard
OpenViking has 41,383 GitHub stars, 3,362 forks, 999 open issues and last shipped yesterday. yard has 2,011 stars, 435 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. OpenViking leads on adoption by 1,958% (41,383 vs 2,011 stars). OpenViking is written in Python under AGPL-3.0; yard is written in Ruby under MIT. OpenViking has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, yard 22%. OpenViking was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| OpenViking | yard | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 2.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-08-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 435 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick OpenViking if
- You weight community size — 41K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick yard if
- You want the yard feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and yard fits your workflow better
About OpenViking
The Context Database for AI Agents English / 中文 / 日本語 Website · Live Demo · GitHub · Issues · Docs · Blog Lark · WeChat · Discord · X What is OpenViking OpenViking is an open source context database for AI agents — one filesystem for everything an agent knows: knowledge, memory, and skills. Most agent memory is a black box: text goes in, embeddings come out, and nobody can see what was actually stored. OpenViking organizes context as a virtual filesystem under viking:// instead. Agents navigate it like files — ls , tree , read , write , grep — and you can open any directory to inspect and edit what your agent…
read the full OpenViking overview →
About yard
YARD: Yay! A Ruby Documentation Tool Synopsis YARD is a documentation generation tool for the Ruby programming language. It enables the user to generate consistent, usable documentation that can be exported to a number of formats very easily, and also supports extending for custom Ruby constructs such as custom class level definitions. Below is a summary of some of YARD's notable features. Feature List 1. Builtin RDoc/Markdown Hybrid Support : YARD ships with a builtin markup renderer that supports both RDoc and Markdown formatting out of the box—no external gem required. You can freely mix RDoc style and…
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenViking or yard more popular?
OpenViking has 41,383 GitHub stars and yard has 2,011. OpenViking has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenViking and yard free?
Both are open source. OpenViking is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and yard under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenViking and yard?
OpenViking is written in Python and yard in Ruby. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, OpenViking or yard?
Choose OpenViking if you want the larger community (41,383 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose yard if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.