Federated Wiki
A federated wiki lets each user own and host their own personal wiki site. Users share pages by dragging content between separate sites across a network. Engineering teams often use this setup to write and share internal system notes. Teams usually start by giving everyone broad admin roles on the host servers. Broad server roles make setup fast, but they create serious security risks later. How a federated wiki architecture works In a standard wiki, everyone edits the exact same central data
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A federated wiki lets each user own and host their own personal wiki site. Users share pages by dragging content between separate sites across a network. Engineering teams often use this setup to write and share internal system notes. Teams usually start by giving everyone broad admin roles on the host servers. Broad server roles make setup fast, but they create serious security risks later.
How a federated wiki architecture works
In a standard wiki, everyone edits the exact same central database at once. A federated wiki changes this model by splitting content into many small sites. Each writer gets a personal site and owns the pages stored there. Pages hold a list of small text blocks and data items in JSON format. Each block also stores a journal of every edit made to that page.
When you read another person's site, your browser fetches their page data directly. If you want to change a page, you drag it into your site. This action creates a fork of the page on your own server space. Your site saves the new edit in the page journal and keeps the history. The original writer can then pull your changes back if they like them.
Site owners must log in to save changes to their own wiki farms. Most setups use an external login provider or a local owner secret file. Once logged in, the owner has full write rights over their hosted site. Other visitors can read public pages and fork them to their own sites. Still, visitors cannot overwrite the original owner's files on the host server.
Why teams host internal wiki farms
Platform teams often run wiki farms to store system diagrams and operational notes. Because pages live as flat JSON files, backups and migrations stay very simple. Developers can also write custom plugins to pull live metrics into wiki pages. Each team can keep its own site while still linking to other teams.
To keep these farms running, ops engineers need access to the underlying Linux servers. They log in to update the runtime, fix broken plugins, or restore files. Teams also run scripts that read and write page files on the disk. Managing who can touch the host server becomes the real security challenge.
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What native site roles leave open
Native wiki login checks only control who can save pages through the browser. They do not govern what engineers do when they log into the server. Once an admin connects to the host, they have full access to everything. A single bad command can delete all wiki sites on that machine.
Native roles also cannot inspect the data inside pages or database queries. Engineers often paste sensitive emails, phone numbers, or card numbers into fixing notes. Anyone who forks that page copies those raw secrets to another server. Server login controls only decide who gets in at the start of a session. They cannot check individual commands or rewrite sensitive fields in results during work.
Check database and API queries on the wire
Identity tools, roles, and network rules decide who opens a session. Setup alone cannot check what each query does or mask sensitive values in a response once a session starts. When workflows touch Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server, MongoDB, ClickHouse, Kubernetes APIs, SSH, or internal HTTP APIs, hoop.dev sits inline in the wire protocol beside those services as an open-source proxy, a sidecar for your Postgres or API. On every query an AI agent or engineer runs against production, hoop.dev decides to pass, mask, block, or hold it for human review.
Your login details and client tools stay as they are while hoop.dev guardrails refuse bad deletes or drops before they run, and hoop.dev data masking rewrites matched sensitive values in responses in memory. Furthermore, hoop.dev holds SOC 2 Type II, is MIT licensed, and writes every query and decision to an audit trail that generates evidence for HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI DSS. See the source on GitHub.
Frequently asked questions
How does a federated wiki store page data?
It stores each page as a simple JSON file on the host disk. Each file contains the page text blocks and a full history of edits.
How do multiple users edit the same topic?
Users do not edit the exact same file at the same time. Instead, a user forks the page to their own site and makes edits there.
Why are host server roles a risk for wiki farms?
Broad server roles let engineers run any command on the host machine. They do not block destructive file deletes or mask sensitive data like national IDs.