Ask an AI about the map
Connect Claude, ChatGPT or an assistant on your own computer, then ask it "what can replace Photoshop for me?" It looks the answer up here, in the same list you see on this site. Read-only: no account, no key, nothing is saved about you.
What it can do
- Find replacements. "I'm leaving Google Photos and I have an iPhone." It picks from the listed alternatives and links each page.
- Compare. "How is LibreWolf different from Firefox?" It reads setup, devices, license, activity and which one is a copy of the other.
- Show the gaps. "What can't open source do yet?"
- Point to a way to help a project you like.
Listings were drafted with AI assistance and are managed by r/TrueOpenSource moderators, so good assistants tell you to check a project's own page. The data is CC BY-SA 4.0: assistants should name this site and link the page they used.
Claude (website, desktop app, phone)
- Open Customize > Connectors, click "+ Add", then "Add custom connector".
- Name it "Open Source Everything" and paste the address https://api.opensourceeverything.org/mcp
- Choose "no sign in" if it asks (nothing here needs an account), then Add.
- In a chat, open the "+" menu > Connectors and switch it on. Ask: "What can replace Photoshop for me?"
Free plans can add one custom connector. On Team or Enterprise plans an owner adds it under Organization settings > Connectors first. If the menus look different, check Claude's help page "Get started with custom connectors using remote MCP".
Claude Code
Add --scope user to have it in every project. Or put the JSON below in a project's .mcp.json.
ChatGPT
- Custom connectors in ChatGPT are in developer mode, which depends on your plan and may need a workspace admin to allow it. Check OpenAI's help pages for where the switch is now (usually Settings > Apps & Connectors > Advanced).
- Create a new connector with the address https://api.opensourceeverything.org/mcp
- Set authentication to "No authentication", then create it and turn it on in a chat.
This is the least settled of the three: check ChatGPT's own documentation if a step does not match.
Local agents and editors (Cursor, VS Code, Gemini CLI, Codex CLI, Cline and others)
Most tools that support remote MCP servers accept this shape in their MCP settings file (the exact file name and the word for the type, "http" or "streamable-http", differ). Check your app's docs for "remote MCP server".
No MCP support
- Ask the JSON API: https://api.opensourceeverything.org/v1/search?q=alternative+to+notion (description: https://opensourceeverything.org/openapi.json).
- Or download everything once: https://opensourceeverything.org/data/catalog.json
Other ways in
- Plain JSON. https://api.opensourceeverything.org/v1/search?q=alternative+to+notion, described in openapi.json.
- Download everything. catalog.json is the whole map in one file. There are also small files for each project, closed app and job; the guide below lists their addresses.
- Guide written for AI. llms.txt explains every field in plain words.