Tolaria

Productivity

markdown note-taking

SHOW HN2026

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Tolaria

Open-source macOS app to manage Markdown knowledge bases

github.com

#markdown notes#knowledge base#offline notes#git notes

318points
142comments
#133of 4,366 in 2026
Top 4%of 2026 by points

How HN took it

DebatedReal support and real criticism

26 positive, 21 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 19 critical, out of 67 comments about the project. Thread score +0.16.

Idea: 12 for, 5 againstExecution: 1 for, 8 againstDesign: 5 for, 3 againstDocs: 1 for, 1 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 1 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Clean, polished UI and design

    From 3 comments
    • Super nice! I've ended up settling on Logseq for note-taking for a while now, but never loved the UI. This is clean and love the git-backed approach. Would love to see a dark…
      r0bbie on HN
    • Hey Luca this is great, trying it now. The UI is gorgeous, congratulations!
      moralestapia on HN
    • Wow thanks! Better than the one I was planning to build for myself. Love the UI. Love the fact that the app was made with Tauri. Nice work, will share!
      Pym on HN
  • Git-first approach for AI context and version history

    From 2 comments
    • Interesting to see this gaining traction so fast. The git-first approach for AI context is a smart differentiator from Obsidian, it lets you see exactly what the AI changed vs…
      repoinsider on HN
    • the idea of being git-first it's exactly for that! so you can setup AI as a git contributor and see its changes clearly
      lucaronin on HN
  • Offline-first, file-based Markdown

    From 2 comments
    • I love how you have used markdown here ! We kind of have used the exact philosophy in https://voiden.md/ - offline-first, file based and support for git. This is exactly the…
      dhruv3006 on HN
    • I love this. Markdown first just makes more sense for knowledge bases. Love the clean ui. I built https://github.com/LostWarrior/knowledge-base which is cli first.
      KBh on HN

Objections

  • Overlaps heavily with Obsidian; unclear why it is needed

    From 3 comments
  • Editor bugs such as code fences and keyboard shortcuts

    From 2 comments
    • I tried it and it looks really nice but like most of these it has too many small editing thorns for me to use. Two I noticed right away - ctrl-a works to go to start of line but…
      sixhobbits on HN
    • Nice work, couple bits of feedback * The editor doesn't seem to support code fence literals (as in I can't type ``` to get a code block) * At very large markdown file sizes the…
      kenforthewin on HN
  • Built with Tauri rather than native macOS

    From 3 comments
    • And I was going to say Mac native as well, but uses Tauri. I’d love some app with the polish of Bear Notes but that just edited raw Markdown files. Ideally Obsidian with the…
      jimmcslim on HN
    • I would be all over this if it was a native macOS app
      msephton on HN
    • A lot of people are posting their similar projects in this thread. Is there anyone making a markdown knowledge management app that feels truly Mac-native, i.e. written in AppKit…
      niek_pas on HN
  • Sorting bug after git commit

    From 1 comment
    • Nice work! This looks really cool. I downloaded and am trying it out, but I'm running into a pretty annoying sorting bug that's preventing me from using it for real. I copied…
      wkcheng on HN

Requests

  • Mobile version

    From 2 comments
    • Great app! One thing I'd love to see is a mobile version — I find myself searching my notes on my phone more often than on desktop.
      valentinkov on HN
    • I often fall back to Apple Notes (I know not really a knowledge base, or markdown) because it syncs between my devices and it's usable on the phone. Is this something you have a…
      dewey on HN
  • Dark mode

    From 1 comment
    • Super nice! I've ended up settling on Logseq for note-taking for a while now, but never loved the UI. This is clean and love the git-backed approach. Would love to see a dark…
      r0bbie on HN
  • Windows version

    From 2 comments
    • I tried this on my Mac. Excellent concept, and the 10k notes is promising. Is there anything similar to this for Windows?
      enola-mag on HN
    • releasing it over the next couple of days
      lucaronin on HN

Questions

  • How it handles performance at 10K+ notes

    From 2 comments
    • Curious how it handles 10K+ notes performance-wise, does it index everything or lazy-load?
      aldielshala on HN
    • Nice work, couple bits of feedback * The editor doesn't seem to support code fence literals (as in I can't type ``` to get a code block) * At very large markdown file sizes the…
      kenforthewin on HN
  • How it differs from Obsidian and VSCode

    From 2 comments
    • Can anyone explain how is it different to VSCode. I just don’t get it. I open VSCode, I have files tree, mardown preview and Claude code to edit. I tried obsidian, Notion. Still…
      ianberdin on HN
    • Doesn’t Obsidian already do pretty much the same?
      antonkochubey on HN
  • How temporal and changing decisions are modeled

    From 1 comment
    • The “types as lenses, not schemas” principle and the focus on structure + relationships really stand out. How do systems like this handle temporal stuff over time? (things that…
      ajbd on HN

Alternatives named

  • Obsidian

    From 2 comments
  • Logseq

    From 2 comments
    • Super nice! I've ended up settling on Logseq for note-taking for a while now, but never loved the UI. This is clean and love the git-backed approach. Would love to see a dark…
      r0bbie on HN
    • This sounds a lot like logseq that I encountered yesterday but I haven’t had a time to use them both: https://logseq.com/
      spockz on HN
  • Notion

    From 2 comments
    • As I was scrolling down the page I was like "what if I wanted to use a notion-style editor instead of markdown" and my requests were instantly met
      SpyCoder77 on HN
    • notion killer
      npv789 on HN
  • Typora

    From 1 comment
    • > I’d love some app with the polish of Bear Notes but that just edited raw Markdown files. Typora? (https://typora.io/)
      astrocat on HN
  • Zettlr

    From 1 comment

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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