Introducing mnote: notes that begin with a folder
Most note apps begin by asking you to trust a service. mnote begins with a folder.
mnote is a personal Markdown notes app for a small, local group. Your notes live as ordinary files in a private vault; the app supplies the useful parts around them without making the vault disappear behind a proprietary format.
A calmer place to keep notes
The daily note is the inbox. From there, pages can grow naturally: freeform Markdown, [[wiki-links]], folders, tags, images, and source or preview views. The point is to make it easy to capture a thought now and decide what it belongs to later.
For the smaller things that should not interrupt a note, mnote has Park a thought: capture it quickly, keep the time and context with it, then promote it to a note when it earns one.
Markdown that stays yours
mnote keeps its durable data in a simple vault:
vault/
notes/
history/
parked/
context/
assets/
That means the notes remain readable on disk and easy to back up. It also means history is tangible: mnote saves note snapshots and lets you inspect or restore a previous revision.
Tags are written in the notes, not trapped in a separate taxonomy. When needed, structured tag search can narrow a result by its surrounding heading or list scope—for example, finding #grocery only inside #shopping.
Local first, with room to grow
For one computer, the desktop app opens a folder and works there—no account, password, server, or always-on service required. Its index and preferences live outside the vault, which keeps cloud-synced folders from being churned by app metadata.
When a few people need their own private vaults, mnote can also run as a small self-hosted service. It has a Rust backend, a Vue interface, browser access, and an Electron remote client. A home-hosted instance over Tailscale is the intended shape: your devices can reach it, while the notes remain on your own machine rather than on the public internet.
Details that make writing less fussy
A few small interactions are especially close to the spirit of the project:
- Type
@to insert a date from a calendar. - Edit Markdown tables in a grid, then write them back as normal Markdown pipes.
- Command- or Control-click task boxes directly in source.
- Use the note picker to find or create pages without leaving the keyboard.
- Move between source and preview when each is the more helpful view.
mnote is not trying to turn personal notes into another feed, database, or cloud dependency. It is a quiet workspace for keeping thoughts in files you control—useful alone, and still straightforward when shared with a few trusted people.