PEpetemir·Jan 22, 2025
hm, perhaps you like edna?
https://edna.arslexis.io/
https://edna.arslexis.io/help
https://github.com/kjk/edna
In Show HN: NotepadJs – A cross-platform love letter to Notepadkjk
edna
TypeScript2024–2025
kjk / edna
edna
Note taking with super powers
3Distinct people
9Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
545GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Note taking with super powers
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by month9 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2024-03-26 18:16:18 UTC to 2025-01-22 13:25:44 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 2024 | 2024-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Apr 2024 | 2024-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2024 | 2024-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Jun 2024 | 2024-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2024 | 2024-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| Aug 2024 | 2024-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 2024 | 2024-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 2024 | 2024-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Nov 2024 | 2024-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Dec 2024 | 2024-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
9 sourcesAs far as individual commits, you can see the scope yourself: https://github.com/kjk/edna/commits/main/
Yes, I like to work in relatively small, but logical, commits.
Yes, I did have clear goals in mind. I knew I wanted multiple notes, storing notes on disk, command palette, encryption etc.
I was writing the app for myself and using it every day, which helps with motivation and knowing what to do next.
There were also changes based on usage. For example, I've added a top nav bar but occasionally it would obscure the text so I made it hidden when typing.
One of the uses of Edna is keeping track of what I want to do next.
I have a note for each project, including Edna, and I keep a list of ideas there, sorted by the most important things at the top.
That way I can jump start the day quickly by looking at that note and picking one of the ite
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ms to implement.
I didn’t realize HeyNote applied Commons Clause to their license.
https://github.com/heyman/heynote/blob/main/LICENSE
https://github.com/kjk/edna/blob/main/LICENSE
In Show HN: Edna, note taking app for developersIt is. It has PWA manifest (https://github.com/kjk/edna/blob/main/public/site.webmanifes...) and you can install it as desktop app (tested with Chrome on Windows).
I should add offline mode.
If you need some specific PWA functionality that isn't there, please open an issue at https://github.com/kjk/edna/issues
In Show HN: Edna, note taking app for developersEdna actually has Emacs mode which you can choose in settings.
You can see implementation: https://github.com/kjk/edna/blob/main/src/editor/emacs.js
I can't say how well it works. I just noticed that I would need to change some keybindings because they conflict with Emacs keybindings.
In Show HN: Edna, note taking app for developersShow HN: Edna, note taking app for developers
I took a small break from coding SumatraPDF and wrote a note taking application that is perfect for me: https://edna.arslexis.io/
Edna is a note taking app for developers and power users. A cross between Obsidian and Notational Velocity.
Markdown, plain text, code, works in browser so no installation required, private (notes are stored in your browser or disk) and secure (can encrypt notes with a password).
The story so far.
I was always attracted to editors with minimalistic UI, like https://mak.ink/, simplenote, Notational Velocity. I like having most of the screen estate for writing because writing and editing is what note taking apps are for.
But: most of them are very thin on features and UI.
I saw Heynote and it was one of those minimalistic writing UIs with not many features.
I liked their concept of dividing notes into blocks so I
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forked Heynote and started coding.
The goal was to combine writing-oriented, minimalistic main UI while also providing on-demand UI for features and efficient operation. Things like context menu, type-down note switcher, command palette, quick access shortcuts, plenty of keyboard shortcuts.
Another goal was privacy and security. The notes never leave your computer and can be encrypted with a password. It also makes the code simpler because I don't need any backend storage, user accounts and auth etc.
Sadly, only Chrome and Edge provide the necessary file system api, on other browser you can only store notes in local storage, which means no sharing between computers or accessing the notes with other software.
40 working days and 528 commits later, here's what I've added:
* added support for multiple notes
* ability to store notes on disk
* and if you store notes in a directory managed by DropBox, OneDrive etc., you get sharing of notes between computers
* Ctrl + P: UI for switching between notes, creating new notes, deleting notes, inspired by Notational Velocity
* Ctrl + Shift + P: command palette like in vs code
* context menu to access frequently used functionality
* Ctrl + E to open note from history (list of recently opened notes)
* ability to assign Alt + 0 ... Alt + 9 quick access shortcuts
* ability to encrypt notes with a password
* export all notes to a .zip file
* automatic, daily backup of notes to a .zip file (optiona, see Settings)
* Ctrl + B to navigate between blocks
* re-designed Settings UI
* added ability to execute Go blocks
* support Svelte and Vue in code blocks
* ported the UI code from Vue to Svelte 5, just because I could
* converted from desktop app to run in the browser
(Ctrl is on Windows, on Mac it's ⌘).
I've been using it daily while working on it. 94 notes and counting.
I still have ideas for improvements but it has all the core features for productive work.
The app: https://edna.arslexis.io/
The code: https://github.com/kjk/edna
Chrome implements APIs that allow accessing files on the disk.
So Edna either stores notes in localStorage or in a directory of your choosing on disk.
In Edna you can right-click for context menu to switch between localStorage and disk.
If you ask: "how do the browser APIs work", you can look at https://github.com/kjk/edna/blob/main/src/fileutil.js
Basically, there's `window.showDirectoryPicker()` to ask user for permission to access directory (either read only or read write). And then using that directory handle you can read list of files, read / write files or create new files.
In Storing knowledge in a single long plain text fileI've built a web-based tool for myself that has similar philosophy: https://edna.arslexis.io/
It does support multiple pages but you can use just one.
It has a nifty feature in that you can divide the single file into virtual parts. They just have alternate backgrounds to tell them apart. And each virtual part can have a type for syntax highlighting (plain text, markdown or a programming language).
I've been using it for a few months now and it's my primary note taking / knowledge recording thing.
Even though it's web based, on Chrome you can save notes on disk so it works like a desktop app.
Each note is a plain text file so you can edit them in any text editor.
If you put notes on a shared drive (Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive etc.) you can work on notes on multiple computers.
It's also open-source: https://github.com/kjk/edna
In Storing knowledge in a single long plain text fileI do that in my Go projects.
In fact my "scripts" are actually part of the main executable. I use cmd-line args to invoke the needed functionality.
For example, in the past I would have written a Python script to deploy my Go binary to a server, possibly using tools like Fabric that provide functionality to make it easier.
Today I add `-deploy-hetzner` cmd-line to my Go binary and it does the work. It builds itself, copies the binary to the server, kills the old instances, configures caddy if needed, starts newly uploaded instance etc.
For example my deploy.go is 409 lines of code, which is not that bad. You can see exactly how this works: https://github.com/kjk/edna/blob/main/server/deploy.go
I standardized on how I deploy things so deploy.go is mostly re-used among several projects.
Writing this code isn't much more difficult that what
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I used to write in Python.
This kind of code can be shorter because I don't have to handle errors, I just panic if something goes wrong.
I like that I don't have to switch between different languages and that I have full control and understanding over what happens. Fabric used to be a bit of a black box.
I even wrote an article about this idea: https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/4b1f9201181340099b698246...