Nodeus

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Why This Exists

You already have Obsidian, Logseq, Notion. They work. They have teams, funding, and years of polish.

Nodeus is one person building the note app they actually want to use.

The whole thing is one binary. No Electron. No hidden browser eating 400MB of RAM. Tauri 2 with a Rust backend, Svelte 5 frontend. Starts in under a second, sits around 80MB of memory, and your notes stay on your machine unless you push them to your own GitHub repo.

If you care about owning your tools and not just your data, give it 5 minutes.

What It Does

Markdown editor with slash commands, tables, task lists, code blocks with syntax highlighting, and drag-and-drop images. WYSIWYG that saves as plain .md files. No proprietary format.

[[Wiki-links]] between notes. Backlinks in the side panel. Graph view that grows as you write.

Full-text search across every note. SQLite FTS5 with stemming, so "writing" matches "write" and "written." Highlighted snippets in results.

AI editing that actually edits. BlockNote-native AI menu with inline diff review — select text and tap the sparkle for rewrite / improve / shorter / longer / translate / simplify, type /ai for the full command list, or press Space on an empty line for Notion-style invocation. Every change streams inline and you accept or reject per-edit before it's applied. Five Nodeus-exclusive commands (Extract Wisdom, Create Tags, Create Outline, Create Flashcards, Explain Terms — adapted from Fabric) sit alongside BlockNote's defaults. Works with OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, OpenRouter, Groq, or any OpenAI-compatible API. Your key is stored locally.

Chat bubble — bottom-right floating AI assistant with native SQLite + RAG tools and MCP server support. Assistant messages render with the same BlockNote typography as the main editor. Press Cmd+J to toggle.

Export everywhere. PDF, DOCX, ODT, and plain Markdown — all wired into the Share & Export modal. Wiki links render as styled text in every format. Click the Share button in the tab bar.

Multi-column layouts. Drag any block to the side of another for Notion-style columns.

Daily notes. Click a date in the sidebar calendar. A templated journal entry appears. No plugins, no setup.

GitHub sync. One button. Pulls remote changes, merges, pushes. Two devices edit the same file? Both versions kept. No merge conflicts in your notes.

8 themes across dark, light, and warm palettes. Each one tuned across the entire UI, not just syntax colors.

Customizable shortcuts, fonts, editor width, and custom CSS injection.

macOS and Linux. Same app. Shortcuts adapt automatically (Cmd on Mac, Ctrl on Linux).

Windows status: unavailable right now. The Rust dependency graph (ort + memvid-core + tantivy) trips the MSVC linker. Will return once the deps are refactored. Follow this issue for progress.

Install

Grab the latest build from the releases page.

macOS — first-launch Gatekeeper workaround

Nodeus is not code-signed or notarized yet — paying Apple $99/year for a one-person project isn't happening yet. On first launch macOS will refuse to run the app with a "Nodeus is damaged and can't be opened" or "cannot verify the developer" error.

Fix it with one command:

xattr -cr /Applications/Nodeus.app

That strips the quarantine attribute Gatekeeper attaches to downloaded apps. You only need to do this once per install. After that the app opens normally like any other.

If you're the cautious type: xattr -cr only clears extended attributes, it doesn't modify the binary. You can verify the app's integrity by checking the SHA on the releases page before running it.

Linux — AppImage or .deb

AppImage (portable, no install):

chmod +x Nodeus_*.AppImage
./Nodeus_*.AppImage

Debian / Ubuntu (.deb):

sudo dpkg -i nodeus_*_amd64.deb
# or
sudo apt install ./nodeus_*_amd64.deb

If the AppImage fails to launch on Wayland, try running with WEBKIT_DISABLE_COMPOSITING_MODE=1.

Shortcuts

All rebindable in Settings > Hotkeys.

Inline AI: press Space on an empty line to open the prompt bar. Fabric patterns: type / and scroll to the AI group.

Built With

Rust, Tauri 2, Svelte 5, BlockNote + its full XL package suite (AI, PDF/DOCX/ODT exporters, multi-column), Vercel AI SDK, SQLite + FTS5, and Tailwind CSS v4.

Build From Source

# Needs: node 18+, Rust stable, git
# Linux prerequisites:
sudo apt install libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev libappindicator3-dev librsvg2-dev patchelf

git clone https://github.com/neur0map/noctodeus.git
cd noctodeus
npm install
npm run tauri dev

To build a release bundle locally:

npm run tauri build

Credits

Nodeus stands on a lot of open-source shoulders:

• Editor core — BlockNote (MPL-2.0 for @blocknote/core, GPL-3.0 for the XL packages — see license note below)
• AI orchestration — Vercel AI SDK (Apache-2.0)
• Icons — Lucide (ISC), Remix Icon (Apache-2.0 via react-icons)
• AI commands — five Nodeus-exclusive patterns adapted from Fabric (MIT)
• Search — SQLite FTS5 + tantivy
• Encrypted sharing — Cryptgeon
• Exporters — react-pdf, docx
• App shell — Tauri

BlockNote XL package licensing

Nodeus uses several @blocknote/xl-* packages (xl-ai, xl-pdf-exporter, xl-docx-exporter, xl-odt-exporter, xl-multi-column) under the GPL-3.0 branch of BlockNote's dual license (GPL-3.0 OR PROPRIETARY). This is permissible because Nodeus itself is licensed under AGPL-3.0, which is compatible with GPL-3.0 per GPL-3.0 §13. If you fork Nodeus into a non-copyleft project, you'll need either to adopt AGPL-3.0/GPL-3.0 for the fork or to acquire a BlockNote commercial license.

Status

Early release. One person, used daily. Rough edges exist. File an issue if you find bugs or want something added — feedback directly shapes what gets built next.

License

AGPL-3.0