I was frustrated with writing apps, and like most I used Apple Notes. After 2+ years immersed in Cursor, Codex and CC, I wished some interactions existed in a text editor.
The Markdown renders in place as you write it, including tables (which you can drag and resize without lining up pipes), KaTeX math and Mermaid diagrams. A lot of thought went into typography and the writing experience.
Your notes on the Mac are plain .md files in a folder with images next to them, so they open in anything else too. Each note keeps 200 versions. If you share a note with a link it syncs peer to peer over WebRTC while someone has it open, and the server that connects you only ever sees a random room id.
Most of the ~1,000 commits went into the editor itself. It's a contenteditable, and I don't let the browser restructure the document at all, which was a lot more work than I expected. Building this to be performant and cross-platform required some novel approaches, which I'll later open source. The editor is free with no account or ads, and there's an optional subscription for sync through your own iCloud.
> Plain Markdown on your own disk, nothing to sign in to, and the whole dialect when you want it — five things worth knowing first, each argued in detail further down
Just to break it down:
"Plain Markdown on your own disk": What an odd way of saying it stores Markdown files on your computer. In this day and age, "Stores all your data locally" is an easy way say this.
"...nothing to sign in to": Reads so awkwardly, I think, because it declares that something that doesn't exist is a good thing. It's like advertising home delivery with "no store to go to". I would put "no account needed" or "no sign-up required".
"...and the whole dialect when you want it": The "when you want it" is so weird here. Why not say it supports all of Markdown?
"...five things worth knowing first, each argued in detail further down": There is something uniquely strange about this phrasing. Why not just say: "Here's five things you should know"? Or just drop it. It doesn't add anything.
Claude is terrible at writing copy. GPT is a bit better. At the moment, Gemini is the best one, I find.
Also, what does the term "greco-roman" have anything to do with Markdown editors?
However, regarding the editor, I really like it at first glance. I wonder if it is possible to register a PWA as the default app for .md files with KDE...
But the landing page is not only obviously ai-generated but also hilariously long. (Like 3 times as long as VS Code’s.)
Maybe I’m wrong on this but does a fancy landing page even have any value in this day and age? Not like it signifies effort anymore…
Not ideal, I know, but maybe it gives you a great typing UX at least
Oh my hod… This absolutely AI generated intro.
Maybe I spent so much time using AI that I started to write like them?
> and like most I used Apple Notes.
Most people i know that write more then just some notes use obsidian, zettlr, … or one of many other markdown editors.
A comparison with existing apps would be nice.
Wasn't that the whole point of Markdown?
There's so many Markdown editors for all platforms, what made you join this crowded niche?
This is another game, my focus is to sweat the details and try new approaches/new tech. I also think most editors don't really do a good job so wanted to build something for myself.
Lastly I wanted to build something silly, there isn't a lot of software that looks like Winamp, this is my small ode to those days.
To put it simply, an automatic update of the app might start uploading the notes to a server. I don't think there is any security boundary in iOS, Android, or any other platform preventing this, right?
Other than that, congratulations on what seems to be a nice app!
Is it really free?
Yes. The editor and local files stay free, with no account
required. Beauty Maximus is an optional subscription for
keeping a library current across Apple devices and for meeting
notes that transcribe and summarize on device.
Show me a well designed md centric notes taker that uses my own drive, syncs between Apple devices, has no subscription and I am listening.
So I scrolled (and scrolled) through your website to find the pricing section, and finally unearthed your very cryptic note about paying for the power option that allows me to sync. This raises three red flags to me:
1. it is hidden and is similar to typical trick clauses that many software products vendors play … you reserve the right to hold back a key feature and make it payable
2. it is cryptic - as you say your product is free on my devices and on web and it is shareable … maybe I can use dropbox to sync, but maybe not … now I have to invest effort to test the limits
3. nothing prevents you from drawing the line quite high for now, but then playing more and more stuff behind your paywall over time, forgive me but (1) has already lowered my trust in you
So here now, I am out. To get me in, you need to win back my trust. Not easy. But your product is very cool. So I make you a counter offer:
1. make your product free for ever including synching across the Apple ecosystem to all personal users
2. look at a product like BBEdit and adopt their freemium model where business users must pay a fair fee and it is enforced via a self declaration or maybe where folk want to collaborate with 3+ colleagues or something (I want you to make money, but I will not pay a subscription for device synching a text editor)
3. open source your code so I can fork and build myself if you go under a bus
4. make your policy clear and upfront (a pricing section with free vs paid comparison would be good)Hell yeah, someone finally got notes right. I don’t say this lightly, but notes are supposed to be simple, fast and easily retrieved.
Apple Notes doesn’t give us nearly enough. Notion gives way too much. Obsidian is a mess. Craft, AnyType, etc are janky, gimmicky or slow.
You managed to make something simple, local, that gives us exactly the features we need for writing and finding notes and also MCP so I can point my agent to it?! I’d give you a fcking nobel prize for this lol
If I try to paste some text (this happens to be json), I get: Paste could not be applied here — nothing was changed.
It seems I can paste regular text, but trying to paste:
{ "mcpServers": { "beauty": { "args": [ "/Applications/Beauty.app/Contents/Resources/mcp/server.cjs", "--endpoint", "/Users/dant/Library/Containers/com.markdown.editor/Data/Library/Application Support/com.markdown.editor/mcp/endpoint.json", "--allow-writes" ], "command": "node" } } }
doesn't work. (This is the generated mcp config from the app itself, I wanted to see what it generated, and tried to paste it into the app. :) )
This does not paste:
"/Applications/Beauty.app/Contents/Resources/mcp/server.cjs"
While this does:
"/Applications/Beauty.app/Contents/Resources/mcp/server.cjs
Something looking for matching quotes?
Many questions come to mind: - What is the revenue model? - What is your personal story? Why you do not explain it in the site?
Without the constraints of a usual project, I feel I'll actually work on it for a much longer time.
I didn't add any story or personal background because I didn't think anyone would care, but good idea! In the meantime, you can follow along on x: @thiago_peres
(That’s how I use zettlr, but with nextcloud instead of Dropbox.)
You're writing a markdown editor, stop jerking yourself off, you're not Marc Aurelius.
Maybe I misunderstand, but the Notes folder isn't really usable from another app as is. There are no folders and all the md files have machine generated names. It appears you can export the data to get the actual structure, but that, of course, requires the app.
Something like Obsidian (or Typora mentioned below) can just be pointed at a folder and use it as is. Makes using multiple editors simple. Here, for example, there doesn't seem to be a way to use this data on linux.
Do I understand all of this correctly?
Thank you!