Show HN: Octarine – a fast, lightweight, opinionated Markdown notes app
octarine.appHey HN! I’ve been building [Octarine](https://octarine.app/) for a little over 2 years. It started because I wanted a note-taking app that was:
- Lightweight (< 30MB, fast to launch, no Electron bloat).
- Opinionated (good defaults, clean UI, not a plugin bazaar).
- Yours (all plain Markdown, nothing proprietary).
---
- Command bar (Cmd/Ctrl+K) to navigate and run commands quickly.
- WYSIWYG editor (rich text without live preview jumping).
- Git sync built-in — backups to GitHub/GitLab, no plugins.
- Natural language dates (“yesterday”, “last week”).
- Multiple workspaces, templates, tags, graph view.
- Backup anywhere — iCloud, Dropbox, Syncthing.
- Tabs & Panes — split and rearrange notes/graphs like a code editor.
*Pro Features*
- BYOK for over 9 AI providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, Gemini and more!
- Ask Octarine — chat with your notes (RAG, embeddings done on-device).
- Writing Assistant — Sidebar assistant to help rewrite, improve or create.
- Focus Mode — distraction-free, sentence spotlight.
- Customisation — 30+ fresh themes, different paper types.
- Locked Notes — Disallow a note from editing.
- Folder Customisations — Add icons/colors to folders, have them manage their own unique sorting.
*FAQ*
- Free plan gets updates forever; some features are Pro.
- Pro is a one-time license (no yearly “updates tax”).
- Over 130+ releases shipped.
- iOS app is in development.
- Overlaps with Obsidian, but follows different methodologies about having less but baked in features, over an extensible plugin system (each work for different users)
---
Try it: [octarine.app](http://octarine.app)
Changelog: [octarine.app/changelog](https://octarine.app/changelog)
Documentation: [docs.octarine.app](https://docs.octarine.app)
I’d love your feedback - what works, what feels off, what’s missing? Always open to ideas (and criticism).
I fought the urge to try anything else other than https://Dendron.so The wait is over. Seems like the perfect replacement, it checks all the boxes: "Lightweight, Opinionated, Yours".
I predict you HUGE success!
Thanks for your work.
Thank you!
Lot's of things planned while aiming to keep the lightweight and opionionated philosophy!
this is really really well designed in comparison to apps like obsidian, since the standard design is actually very readable and actually makes you want to write stuff. i think this could replace my current zettler setup in writing papers when you could map hotkeys to most stuff, and it would have a zotero integration in some way. lovely project!
Thank you! I haven't really used zotero, but I feel you can integrate it using url schemes? I have a PR up that opens up `octarine://` url scheme to allow creating notes/folders (it was built for the webclipper repo).
Currently keymaps aren't modifiable, but there's an item on the roadmap to change hotkeys.
I don't have much clue about integration of such features as well unfortunately. Another thing I just realized though is, when you press CTRL+Z it will always open the "Recently Viewed" tab, I think that hotkey combination gotta be changed :D
Are you by any chance on a german keyboard? or a different keyboard layout?
I've had a report before where they keyboard layout messes up, for Z & Y. `Cmd + Y` is Recently viewed while `Z` does undo
I'm on a german keyboard layout, yeah.
This is amazing, and truly impressive.
What's the best place to submit issues, feature requests, etc?
Something I use on Obsidian is my own CSS as a theme (to override default editor styling). I see themes is a feature of Octarine. Will users be allowed to set their own CSS as a "custom theme"?
Either:
1. Discord (https://octarine.app/discord)
2. Github (http://octarine.app/issues)
Currently the app supports 33 themes (3 free, 30 on the pro license). There's an item on the roadmap that would allow you to create your own themes (each theme is a palette of 10-12 variables - border/bg/text/outline)
Hope you like the app :)
Looks awesome! What's the tech stack btw?
Tauri - Bundler
React, Typescript, Tailwind, Tiptap - Frontend
File level operations, search - rust
[dead]