Still need to render widget tables, lists and syntax highlighting for code blocks for a basic modern notepad, i'm not sure about open sourcing it, seems like a waste of time nowadays but it'll be free to use.

[0]: https://i.imgur.com/ro9Zq9w.png [1]: https://i.imgur.com/pbJcTQF.gif

When I read "an alternative", I assumed feature-parity and API compatibility. But what I found out was entirely different and much more interesting.

I'll give it a try, thanks for sharing your year-old work!

The 2GB free quota on Dropbox is plenty enough for text (and some screenshots). Or you could self-host obviously. Git while lovely for source code is a hassle for notes.

“Second brain grows, but first brain doesn’t get smarter.”

Something I remember Tiago Forte said, which turned me off of his partículas brand of a second brain, is that his goal is to “remember nothing”, and have the second brain surface exactly the context necessary at the moment, which he would proceed to read and ingest.

That sounds terrible to me :) it’s like “we don’t need to remember things if we can google them”.

I much prefer this author’s vision of using the second brain to strengthen the first brain.

So that your files and tools can grow together, fully under your ownership, through the ages.

The app can be easily tweaked for your own needs via an LLM - code is optimized for that.

P.S. And Golang seems to be great fit for this kind of software.

There is no better interface for text than a terminal, and we are in the golden age. Despite being extremely powerful, this setup will run on resource constrained machines.

My take: you probably don't need so much metadata!

I've spent an unreasonable amount of time trying to figure out the perfect knowledge management app for me and honestly, I'm pretty sure I will get a lot of mileage out of something you just throw pages into, search to find it again, and ask AI to summarize/consolidate when you need it again.

We had those already more than a decade ago. Personally, I fondly remember Mou.

Obsidian has heavy Electron vibes, and Files.md is several steps more into the wrong direction.

The name is also bad. It feels like it was chosen because someone already had the domain.

https://www.qownnotes.org/

(Note: The NextCloud integration is entirely optional, I've never used it. The front page makes it sound like a requirement.)

Synchronizing with Syncthing works well enough both on desktops and smartphones.

While OSS is nice, in theory it allows vibe-coding personalizations, without a clear plugin standard then every update would cause a merge headache.

And there is no lack of text editors.

The first real Obsidian alternative would allow use of existing Obsidian plugins. And I think this one thing could really make an alternative gain traction, with both users and those who contribute to the plugin ecosystem.

I do not know what to do with my pet project. I'm using it myself, and it has tons of futures that took quite some effort to get right. For example, WYSIWYG table editing is not trivial, and Claude Opus agrees with me, in the sense that it could not manage it (at all) by itself.

Open-sourcing it is an option, but I don't look forward to negative feedback. If anyone else wants Emacs keybindings in Obsidian, I will change my mind :)

https://github.com/rbbydotdev/opal

I've been a huge fan of the fact that my backend sync infrastructure is my own self-hosted S3 bucket with local clients handling the presentation layer.

"TextBundle brings convenience back - by bundling the Markdown text and all referenced images into a single file."

I find the best thing to do when studying something is to go over your material, internalize and synthesize it in an essay. If you can't create an original essay which perfectly replicates the knowledge you want to understand then you almost certainly don't understand it perfectly.

Alternatively, create a detailed flow chart using subcharts if you have to. (Graphviz/dot is good for this)

It looks and feels great, congratulations for getting this out.

Definitely not easy to replicate Obsidian UX.

>Do we really need this feature? Will it help us to do the real job, or does it just give dopamine?

Makes me think that requests for features generally will be turned down. So, No, thank you. Sometimes less is less.

I saw this bit of advice on twitter last week -- to use HTML as the target output for your LLM when you do planning or discussion sessions. And it's been very nice. It's so much easier to parse lots of info when it's presented in an organized/color-coordinated HTML file (potentially with some limited interactivity, and SVG drawings), rather than a block of markdown.

I now wonder if I should give my personal notes the same treatment. The only disadvantage HTML has relative to markdown is that HTML is harder to write and style. But you now have LLMs for that. And HTML/CSS/JS lets you customize your notes in whatever way you want. If you use HTML, any browser becomes your "note-viewing" app, and HTML is just as easy to store and move around as markdown, because it's just plain text.

[1]: https://github.com/jwillmer/ai-status

Interesting. Productivity tools should not force me getting creative to do the simplest things. Ideally, I can make it adapt to my workflow, not the other way around.

Not under app.files.md? What do you think?

or just vibe your own solution :)

I particularly like having a tg bots for observability, certain errors and certain events will get sent to a dedicated bot for my project. Highly recommend.

Very good work.

I have been building a slightly different solution to the same problem. So far I’m pretty happy with the results and I have enough returning users that I think others are too (https://sdocs.dev/analytics).

I’ve built SmallDocs (https://sdocs.dev; Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47777633).

SDocs is cli (`sdoc file.md`) -> instantly rendered Markdown file in the browser

When you install the cli it gives you the option to add a note in your base agent file (`~/.claude/CLAUDE.md`, etc.). This means every agent chat knows about SDocs and you can say “sdoc me the plan when you’re done with it” and the file will pop open instead of you having to find that terminal session to know it’s done.

Going browser first means you’re not required to install anything to get a great experience.

Despite being in the browser, the content of SDocs rendered Markdown files remain entirely local to you. SDoc urls contain your markdown document's content in compressed base64 in the url fragment (the bit after the `#`):

https://sdocs.dev/#md=GzcFAMT...(this is the contents of your document)...

The url fragment is never sent to the server (see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/URI/Reference/F...: "The fragment is not sent to the server when the URI is requested; it is processed by the client").

The sdocs.dev webapp is purely a client side decoding and rendering engine for the content stored in the url fragment.

This also means you can share your .md files privately by sharing the url.

I've enjoyed exploiting the HTML rendering side of things which is possible by displaying Markdown in a browser. I’ve added tagged code blocks that the agent is given documentation on how to use. Eg ```chart or ```mermaid (for mermaid diagrams). These then become interactive elements on the page (mermaid is best example of this currently). See live renderings of these options here - charts gallery: https://sdocs.dev/s/yO3WbxFf#k=arcDBnizla5n437VFAeiQcwlu8kh_..., diagrams gallery: https://sdocs.dev/s/B_Ux11DV#k=KsvheEkiBFai6acnoIJnrOdfVRS5u...

"What a great use of my time building a competitor that adds no value, just to save a few dollars a month on sync and publishing. I hope other people value their time as little as I do and contribute"

Have fun!