// the find
0xGG/crossnote-app
📝 Local-first markdown notebook - notes live in your browser or local folders as plain markdown files, synced with in-browser git. No server, no account, works offline.
Crossnote is a browser-based, local-first markdown notebook that stores notes as plain files and syncs them directly to a git remote using isomorphic-git — no backend server or account required. It's aimed at people who want a note-taking app that treats their files as the source of truth rather than a proprietary format locked behind a service. The project is mid-handoff: the original author shut down the app's backend and stepped away, and a new maintainer is rebuilding it from scratch.
Sync model is the real selling point — git-as-backend via isomorphic-git means your notes are portable, diffable, and not hostage to any one app's server. Decent automated test coverage for a rewrite in progress: Playwright e2e specs covering notebooks, layouts, tabs, and local folder handling, plus component-level unit tests. The widget system (kanban, OCR, video, timer, mermaid, plantuml, vega) shows the editor is more than a bare markdown textarea.
This is a fresh rebuild after the original backend was killed and the author left — expect churn, missing features from the legacy version, and possibly abandoned momentum again if the new maintainer doesn't stick around; check the `legacy-final` tag vs current state before relying on it. Core persistence leans on the File System Access API, which Firefox and Safari still don't support, so 'local-first' effectively means 'Chromium-first' for local folder sync. `public/deps` vendors minified third-party libraries (echarts, mermaid, marked, prism) directly into the repo instead of pulling them as normal npm dependencies, which is awkward to audit or update. AGPL-3.0 licensing is a real consideration for anyone wanting to fork or embed this commercially.