Competitive landscape — docir vs. the alternatives (2026-08-24)

A fresh compile, not an edit of ref-a6db21f52427. That document is the 2026-08-03 snapshot and stays readable for its gap history — eleven gaps closed with the analysis that produced the work. This one carries the state of the market on 2026-08-24 and the gaps still open.

Method¶

Repository metadata read from the GitHub API on 2026-08-24. Feature claims come from each project's own README and docs, not from hands-on use — where a claim rests on their documentation being accurate, it is a documentation claim. Where a source is silent a cell reads ? rather than no. docir's own column was read from the 0.17.0 working tree and re-read at 0.18.0 on 2026-08-25; the competitor columns are unchanged from the dates above. Re-verifying docir's own cells in place is this document's standing practice — they are the one column its author can check against a working tree, and freezing them would make the comparison wrong in the only direction it is able to correct.

What moved since 2026-08-03¶

Three things, and only one of them is about features.

The decision-record category has gone quiet. Log4brains — the tool docir's publishing story was measured against — last pushed 2024-12-17, twenty months ago. DocHub last pushed 2026-03-18. Neither is dead, but neither is moving, and the gap analysis that treated them as pacing competitors was pricing a race nobody is running.

The spec-driven category has exploded. GitHub's Spec Kit is at 131k stars and OpenSpec at 66k, both pushed within the last three days. That is where the attention in this space now is, and it is the one adjacent market whose growth docir should have an answer for — see The gap that is not a feature.

The retrieval lane keeps filling. qmd is at 29.1k stars. Three entrants appeared since the last compile — kbx (SQLite + LanceDB + FTS5, Python), memweave (markdown + SQLite, no vector DB) and mjm.local.docs (.NET, markdown ADRs behind a Blazor UI and an MCP server) — none with traction yet, all with the same shape. The idea is not scarce; the execution is.

Table A — the closest technical competitors¶

docir 0.17.0, qmd 2.8.3 and Basic Memory re-read on 2026-08-24; sqlite-memory's cells date from the 2026-08-03 compile and are marked ? where a row postdates them.

	docir	Basic Memory	qmd	sqlite-memory
Stars / last push	—	3.7k · today	29.1k · 2026-08-18	111 · 2026-07-21
Language / install	Python, uv tool install docir	Python, pip/uvx	Node/Bun, npm	C ext + Go CLI
License	MIT	AGPL-3.0	MIT	NOASSERTION
Index	SQLite (metadata + FTS5 + graph + vectors)	SQLite or Postgres + vectors	SQLite (FTS5 + sqlite-vec)	single SQLite
Lexical + vector + fusion	✅ RRF	✅ hybrid	✅ RRF, weighted	⚙️ weighted blend
Embedding model	✅ swappable (embed_model:, any fastembed model)	✅ FastEmbed	✅ swappable per role	?
Query expansion / HyDE	⚙️ the caller supplies them (context --also); docir generates none, by decision (adr-27c63ad02695)	❌	✅ fine-tuned 1.7B	?
Score explainability	✅ --explain: ranks, RRF terms, cosine, graph provenance	?	✅ --explain	?
Expression over the corpus	✅ query --expr (JMESPath over fields + resolved edges)	❌	❌	❌
Reranking	❌ measured worse, rejected (adr-d657a09b8c4a)	⚙️ cross-encoder, default off for latency	✅ LLM cross-encoder	❌
Retrieval unit	✅ document + every ## section	note	chunk (~900 tok, overlapped)	chunk
Passage citation	✅ matched_section, feeds get --section	❌	✅ passage + location	⚙️
Benchmark an adopter can run	✅ docir bench <fixture>	❌	✅ qmd bench	❌
Typed relation graph	✅ typed, successor-aware traversal	✅ typed (single-token kinds)	❌	❌
Schema enforced at write	✅ hard Tier-0 gate	⚙️ schema_infer/validate/diff (advisory)	❌	❌
Staleness / review cadence	✅ owner + verified + review_days	❌	❌	❌
Integrity checks	✅ check --strict CI gate, --fix	⚙️ doctor	❌	⚙️ content-hash
MCP server	✅ 20 tools	✅ ~15 tools	✅ 4 tools, stdio + HTTP	✅
Import from existing docs	❌ by decision (issue-20933967697b)	✅ Claude/ChatGPT/memory-json	✅ any directory	✅
Team / device sync	git only	✅ Cloud, $15/mo	❌	✅ CRDT

Two cells flipped toward docir since the last compile, and both were this month's work: the embedding model became swappable (issue-a24f404dd106), and docir bench closed the row where qmd had pulled ahead. One cell is worth watching: Basic Memory ships cross-encoder reranking and defaults it off for latency, which is the same answer docir reached by measurement.

Table B — decision-record & governance tooling¶

Cells from the 2026-08-03 compile except where dated. Activity re-checked 2026-08-24, and activity is the story here.

	docir	Log4brains	DocHub	Spec Kit / OpenSpec
Activity	active	last push 2024-12-17	last push 2026-03-18	131k / 66k ★, pushed this week
ADR creation	✅	✅ interactive	⚙️ entities, not decisions	✅ agent commands
Search over the corpus	✅ lexical + semantic	⚙️ site search	⚙️ JSONata over the model	❌
Validation	✅ schema, status, tags, edges	❌	✅ user-written validators	⚙️ structure
Static site	✅ docir build + constellation graph	✅ Pages/S3	✅ portal	❌
Freshness	✅ owner/verified/cadence	❌	❌	❌
Workflow phases	❌	❌	❌	✅ propose→spec→task→archive

What docir has that nobody else does¶

Unchanged from the last compile, and now better evidenced:

1. A hard validation gate on write. Basic Memory can infer and validate a schema, and now diff one; docir refuses the write. Everyone else stores what the agent typed.
2. Staleness as data. owner + verified + review_days + a review queue, still unique across every tool in both tables.
3. Corpus integrity as a CI gate, with repair. check --strict fails a merge; check --fix repairs what needs no guess.
4. Skeleton reads as a contract. No list path returns a body.
5. Published and reproducible retrieval numbers. docir was the only tool publishing any; it is now one of two whose users can reproduce them on their own corpus.

Open gaps¶

Five of the eighteen in ref-a6db21f52427 remain open or deliberately unbuilt, and one of those five is half-closed. The rest closed — that document holds the analysis that produced the work, and rel-0c8d261640f6 links what 0.18.0 did about the two below.

14. No expression language over the corpus¶

Half-closed on 2026-08-25, and the open half is the one that carries the risk.

docir query --expr '<JMESPath>' ships: an expression over each document's own fields plus its edges resolved in both directions, applied before the limit (adr-7316abc6be93). Three of the four questions this gap was opened with are now askable — stale && owner == null, `related[?status=='superseded']`, `length(related_by[?kind!='relates_to']) == `0. The fourth is an aggregate across documents and is out of reach of a per-document predicate.

What DocHub still has and docir does not is the second use of the same grammar: an expression a store declares and the tool runs unasked, which is what turns a query language into a validator. That half is deliberately unbuilt, because it is where adr-b2cfed9d5888's refusal actually gets tested — an expression docir runs on your behalf is much closer to a rule than one you type — and because the grammar should be exercised by hand before anything runs it unattended. Tracked in issue-9b2d2ab09060, with the severity question it needs settled first.

So this is no longer the most credible open gap. It is a gap with its risky half left, on purpose.

16. No query expansion and no HyDE¶

Closed on 2026-08-25, in both halves and neither the expected way.

The model-free half was built and measured and lost: pseudo-relevance feedback cost 0.13 recall@5 on docir's own corpus, because the first pass is already right 88% of the time and rewriting from its own top hits mostly amplifies the 12% where it was not (adr-46b69a581c65).

The generative half is closed by adr-27c63ad02695, and the reason is positional rather than about cost. docir's caller is already a frontier model that has read the code; shipping a 0.5-1.5B rewriter underneath it would add a weaker generator below a stronger one and ask it to guess at context the caller had and did not send. So docir generates nothing, and context --also accepts the rewrite instead — which is HyDE done by the better model, measured at recall@5 0.88 -> 1.00 for a correct hypothetical.

The cell against qmd stays ⚙️ rather than ✅ and that is honest: qmd expands a query the caller never has to think about, and docir requires the caller to do it. Which is right depends on whether the caller is a model, and for qmd it may be a shell.

10. Packaging weight¶

~240 MB of dependencies. Unchanged, and now with a second edge: a multilingual model is 220 MB on top of the default's 67 MB, so the swappable-embedder work made the ceiling higher rather than the floor lower.

9, 11, 12 — correct omissions¶

No conversation capture, no wikilink compatibility, no sync beyond git. Each is a deliberate consequence of the "curated corpus, git canonical" thesis. Listing them is scope-awareness.

The gap that is not a feature¶

The spec-driven category is at 131k and 66k stars while the ADR category has stopped moving. Read plainly: far more people want an agent workflow than want a decision archive.

docir has no workflow phases and should not grow them — that is Spec Kit's product, with more attention behind it than docir will ever have. But the adjacency is real in one direction: a spec-driven workflow produces decisions, and nothing in either tool keeps them once the task archives. The question worth holding is not "should docir have phases" but "what should docir be to a repo that already runs one" — and the answer is probably the code: glob and docir context, not a second workflow.

Nothing here is a decision. It is the one thing in this compile that changed enough to deserve one later.

Sources¶

• GitHub API metadata, 2026-08-24: tobi/qmd · basic-memory · sqlite-memory · log4brains · DocHub · OpenSpec · Spec Kit
• READMEs re-read 2026-08-24: qmd (2.8.3), basic-memory
• New entrants: kbx · memweave · mjm.local.docs
• The superseded compile and its gap history: ref-a6db21f52427