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Show HN: Writedown - Open Source Markdown Diary

writedown.app

99 pointsNayamAmarshe39 comments

Where can I download an executable binary I can run directly on my system, ideally without having to make an account either? Those are two pretty important things for me

It said in the title it was open source. The code is here :

https://github.com/NayamAmarshe/writedown

The link was on the front page of the submitted page.

The source (is cool to have) but it does not include any installation instructions in the slightest. Also it sounds like you would still need to "sign in" even if you built it from source.

That’s a fair point. I’ve released 9 projects via open source from my job - we have a very straightforward open source process (MIT-0 license) - and I always have information about how to build and deploy my projects in the README.

I have updated the instructions. Will also create a docker image soon :)

There are instructions in the /docs directory of the project on how to setup firebase.

I'll update the installation instructions too.

Hiya Hackers!

For the past few months, I've been working on writedown (https://writedown.app, https://github.com/NayamAmarshe/writedown). A free and open source markdown editor that focuses on UI and UX. It's made to be simple and beautiful but still powerful.

writedown has live markdown preview (option to disable this also coming soon), offline support, PWA and cloud sync.

You can also share your posts with other people (https://writedown.app/DhpDKTulcnOecM3wYt4AOiWiuGE3/posts/82f...) and download your posts in PDF, Markdown or HTML format.

Please do tell me how you like it and if you think it's useful (or not). I've been trying to create something simple that I could use for my personal notes, notes that I can share with my friends and so writedown came into existence.

I hope you like it and if you don't, I'd love to know the reasons. This is our second MVP and we're sharing this public beta with you all.

Thank you :)

Source Code: https://github.com/NayamAmarshe/writedown

An option to try it without logging in would be nice. Since it has offline support it seems like that should be possible?

Yes, we were actually working on it too but had to prioritize some other things.

In future though, we'll surely be adding the ability to use the editor without logging in so. Login will be there if you want to save the notes via cloud sync :)

Looks cool! Curious how you envision the difference between using something like Obsidian (+ github for sync) or LogSeq vs Writedown? Do you plan on supporting networked thought features like concept graphs via hashtags & [[keyword links]] ?

As the app grows, so will the complexity but I wouldn't want it to turn into something like Notion or Obsidian.

Our goal with writedown is to keep things simple. A simple interface that focuses on writing, not complicated features like Kanban, graphs or doing too many things at once.

writedown, since it's got social features like blog posts, will feature more of them in the future. So while the complexity may grow as far as publishing features are concerned, the editor itself will remain simple and powerful :)

What do you use for syncing notes?

I like this a lot, can you talk about what you are doing to protect user's private data? that's something I'd want to be convinced about before I use it.

On the privacy front, we're never going to compromise the user data, never going to sell it, never going to share it with anybody else. We'll be making writedown self-hostable as well.

On the security front, we're using firebase firestore as the database. So at rest, it's well encrypted.

We're thinking of introducing some sort of encryption via passwords (kinda how I already am doing it on https://maglit.me). E2EE would be quite difficult and would affect the usability.

Is encryption at rest that useful? These days it's trivial to enable full disk encryption on most systems so it's not so important what individual apps are doing.

E2EE is definitely important however, personally I wouldn't use a journaling app that doesn't have this. In which way would it affect usability?

Here's some more information about the encryption: https://cloud.google.com/firestore/docs/server-side-encrypti...

> In which way would it affect usability?

Cloud sync would be quite difficult and I'd like to avoid the backup-restore game that most other apps don't seem to mind, because writedown's focus is on reducing complexity for people.

I'm not someone who uses Notion, I find it rather complicated and most apps that I've tried just try to do too much. Telegram is great for storing notes but it doesn't support markdown.

Handling the keys with E2EE is a big challenge. There's not a normal way to use E2EE without affecting the sync capabilities, login capabilities, offline capabilities or usability.

There would be extra complexity for sure, especially with key management, but I don't think it would affect sync much. It's end-to-end so by definition it should only happen client-side, and instead of sending plaintext to the cloud your send the ciphertext.

Yep, it's a good challenge too. I'm not giving up on the idea of E2EE, of course. Just trying to find ways to do it so that there are no compromises with usability.

Considering you use Firebase,"we're never going to sell your data" is something I've heard a lot, until the first Firebase invoices come in.

The problem with Firebase I've seen is not the E2EE but rather the ACLs being set. There have been 10s of websites that were exposed to public, that have been exposed in the recent past. Not to claim you are doing something wrong, just a caution to anyone who uses firebase.

Yes, you're not wrong. The Firebase rules have to be perfect for the app to be secure. Thanks for the heads-up, we'll make sure our rules are perfect :)

I implemented something similar in the past, in terms of storing user-generated content and found this barrier, the privacy. Although I tried to use google docs with encrypted data for guaranteing integrity, there is no way to demostrate to the user that a third party server (the app server, which actually connects to google docs api) is not manipulating its data.

I use logseq for my diaries. https://logseq.com/

It's very powerful, but really doesn't feel that way. Each day I open it, it creates a new YYYY-MM-DD.md and shows it to me. All content is MD lists (or "blocks") and can be individually tagged with #hashtags. When there's a certain topic I wrote about, say writing down a dream I had, I tag the top-level block with #dream. Then I can write under it as I please. All such blocks will be visible on the #dream page, with the correct dates visible.

It's very easy to wrap my head around. I just write, outliner style, whatever I'm thinking of and want to write down. Never need to create a new page, always just directly to writing. Earlier dates can be found by just scrolling down.

I don't know why anyone with the technical knowhow to use a notetaking tool that's just a folder with markdown files would use a journaling app on some server somewhere. Syncing is very easily handled, too, with something like Syncthing or Dropbox.

For a heavy joplin user - can you compare the features? It looks like an awesome UI, but wanna make sure itll be good before I jump!

I care about longevity, will I get local .md files so I can easily back up and have them to move to other programs if the worst were to happen?

Do you have a taggin system? Hard to see in the screenshot.

What about linking notes? To be honest, joplin sucks a bit about this.

How do you pay for hosting? Joplin has Jolin cloud, and its a couple bucks a month, how do you make it free, especially in the long run?

> I care about longevity, will I get local .md files so I can easily back up and have them to move to other programs if the worst were to happen?

Yes, you can easily download PDF, HTML and MD files.

> Do you have a taggin system? Hard to see in the screenshot.

No not yet, since this is our second MVP and public beta. We have planned a tagging system though, because it's important for our social blog features.

> What about linking notes? To be honest, joplin sucks a bit about this.

Not yet, because we want to avoid too much complexity on the UI side but yes, the features will grow as the app grows :)

> How do you pay for hosting? Joplin has Jolin cloud, and its a couple bucks a month, how do you make it free, especially in the long run?

I have a sponsored hosting from Vercel because the project is FOSS. All I need to do is take care of the firebase side. We did talk about introducing paid plans but that's far future for now, we'll adjust according to the feedback we get and it also depends on how people are using the app.

Been looking for a good mobile markdown editor for a blog so I love this. A few things:

* Github login is broken for me

* Lots of extra vertical space on the edit page on mobile when in landscape.

* Would be great if one of the publish options was to publish to a github repo for use with github pages!

> Github login is broken for me

Ah sorry about that, will fix it ASAP.

> Lots of extra vertical space on the edit page on mobile when in landscape.

Ah right, that's from the desktop. Will fix that as well.

> Would be great if one of the publish options was to publish to a github repo for use with github pages!

Thanks for the suggestion, we'll keep on adding more publishing features with time :)

So if you guys are into diary and personal note keeping I am just working on a telegram bot that do just that.

@Simple_DIary_bot

That you can use: http://t.me/Simple_DIary_bot

I wanted it to work with audio messages so you can just send an audio message that is send to openai whisper and a text is extracted.

It also send an reminder everyday so that I don't forget my daily entry.

Technically it is all based on AWS Lambda and Dynamodb.

Ah, pretty cool!

I use Telegram for notes/journals too but it doesn't support markdown and that's how I got the idea for writedown haha.

Huh? Telegram does support md (in it's own flavour)?

Lists, headings, images are not supported + there's a character limit.

Good job !

Glad to see yet another tools in this overcrowded field. It confirms my choice to never use one and stick to a text editor like neovim : key M-J to open a daily file, type in what ever I want and abuse using search and grep via telescope to navigate.

Flat files are easy to sync and mine follow me since 2013.

So rentry.org, but with a live markdown preview and log in requirement.

Obsidian has a diary mode FYI.

Its license isn't open-source, though.

https://github.com/zadam/trilium

GitHub and Google the only options to log in? No thanks.

As I said, this is our second MVP, our first beta. Option to write notes without login is planned :)

We also had it implemented but ran into a few bugs with idb.

Reminds me of Joplin

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