THE NoteTHINK IT. WRITE IT. RUN IT.

YOUR LOCAL NOTEBOOK

Write. Think. Try it.

A calm place for thoughts, plans and projects. You write in Markdown, organise in folders and tick things off. And when a note needs to work something out, it simply does the maths.

Install THE Note How it feels

v0.2.5 Preview · macOS Apple Silicon · Open Source · GPL-3.0

Travel / ± Changes
LOCAL
Markdown · UTF-8
  • 1Click a paragraph: its Markdown appears.
  • 2Tick off tasks.
  • 3Change a number and run the block.

A NOTEBOOK FOR EVERYTHING ON YOUR MIND

From the first thought
to the next step.

  1. 01

    Write the way you think.

    Live Markdown: you see the finished page and still just type text. Headings, lists, checklists, tables, maths and diagrams. Focus mode when you need quiet.

    • Checklists
    • Tables with formulas
    • KaTeX
    • Mermaid
    • Focus mode
    A note with headings, an idea list and a checklist
  2. 02

    Everything in its place.

    Folders and notes in the sidebar, recipes with recipes, minutes with minutes: just drag a note onto a folder. Tabs with their own undo, renamed with a double-click. /date inserts a date exactly at the caret.

    • Folders
    • Drag to move
    • Tabs
    • Full-text search
    A folder with sub folders and an inline date picker
  3. 03

    See what changes.

    Before you save, ± Changes shows the difference to the last saved state. Per tab, with line numbers and no surprises.

    • Before / after
    • Per tab
    • Line numbers
    Diff with red deletions and green additions
  4. 04

    AI when you call it.

    /ai opens a prompt right in the note. OpenAI, Claude, Gemini or an internal API with your own key. You only accept what fits.

    • /ai
    • Your own key
    • Context only on request
    Inline AI with a prompt and a Mermaid draft
  5. 05

    And when there is maths to do.

    A code block in your note calculates, checks or tries something out: shell, Python or JavaScript, local and with a stop button. The output appears below and never ends up in your file.

    • Python
    • Shell
    • JavaScript
    • Live output
    The same note in dark forest green with a cost calculation and its output

IN DETAIL

Small on the surface.
Big in everyday use.

Live or source

One key switches between the finished page and plain Markdown.

Tabs with their own undo

Every note remembers its history, even when you switch.

Tables that calculate

/formel inserts a table with =SUM(D2:D4). The file keeps the formula, the note shows the result. Plus KaTeX, Mermaid and D2.

Light and forest green

Follows your system on first launch, then your choice.

Export

HTML out of the box, more formats via Pandoc.

Local, no account

Just .md files on your Mac. Nothing has to go to a cloud.

GET STARTED

A blank page
or a template.

Under ＋ Neue Notiz (new note) you get a blank page or a template. Two example notes show what code blocks can do inside a note. Every block in them only reads and changes nothing.

  • Blank note
  • Journal
  • Runbook
  • Sketch an idea
✦ Playful

The playground

  • 🚀 Countdown with live output
  • 🎲 A dice oracle for small decisions
  • ✦ A Sierpinski triangle from x & y
  • 🌀 Mandelbrot in characters
  • 🐟 An aquarium to stop
View the note ↗
⌘ Useful

The toolbox

  • Check installed runtimes
  • Summarise a folder by file type
  • Git at a glance
  • Calendar week and days until …
  • CSV spending, JSON check, passphrase
View the note ↗

READY FOR YOUR NEXT IDEA

A small start.
Lots of room after.

Install THE Note as a DMG, with Homebrew or from the terminal. The current build is for macOS 11+ on Apple Silicon.

Download DMG for macOS

Open the DMG and drag THE Note to Applications.
ZIP alternative

v0.2.5 · Development version
Developer ID signed and notarised by Apple.

TERMINAL
brew tap tobwil/thenote https://github.com/tobwil/THENote
brew trust --cask tobwil/thenote/the-note
brew install --cask tobwil/thenote/the-note

Homebrew 6 needs the one-time trust step. Skip that line on older versions.

Updates: brew upgrade --cask tobwil/thenote/the-note

On first launch

The preview is Developer ID signed and notarised by Apple. On first launch, confirm the standard macOS prompt for an app downloaded from the internet by choosing “Open”. Save your notes and quit the app before updating. Installation details ↗

OPEN. LOCAL. TRACEABLE.

Your notes
stay yours.

No app account. No proprietary note format. You decide which files you open and whether you use AI at all. Note content is only sent to your AI provider when the context option is switched on.

THE Note is open source under GPL-3.0-or-later. Its development, the conversation history, tests and known limits are documented in public.

Code blocks run with your local user permissions. AI providers may charge for API usage. The preview above is recreated in your browser; the screenshots show example notes with locally produced output and a simulated AI answer. The app interface is currently in German.

Changelog ↗How it was made ↗README ↗

Built on good ideas.

Thanks to Sarala by Srinivas Gowda for the editor foundation and to Ledge for executable notes and the frontmatter parser. THE Note is an independent derivative project. Origin & licences ↗