Notes
Create markdown notes with live editing, preview, toolbar shortcuts, inline color accents, highlights, tags, pinning, and save actions from buttons, menus, or keyboard shortcuts.
Product Overview
What Notara is
Section titled “What Notara is”Notara is a local-first personal workspace built with React, TypeScript, and Vite. The app ships as a browser SPA, a Tauri desktop app, and a Dockerized web runtime. Its center of gravity is markdown notes, but the product also includes task planning, visual boards, calendar organization, and AI tools without requiring a cloud account.
The current release emphasizes three ideas:
- Keep data readable. Desktop data is stored in JSON and markdown files inside a Notara workspace rather than a hidden proprietary database.
- Make planning multi-modal. Notes, todos, vision boards, and calendar views all reference the same personal workflow instead of living in separate tools.
- Treat AI as an in-app tool, not the product. The assistant helps with drafting, summaries, and image generation, but your workspace remains usable without external setup.
Core areas of the app
Section titled “Core areas of the app”Tags and starred notes
Use color-coded tags, manage them from Settings, and keep important notes surfaced through the starred flow in navigation and note headers.
Todos
Build dated lists with nested sub-items, time fields, completion states, and an in-app calendar picker that works cleanly in desktop builds.
Calendar
See upcoming items, jump back to today quickly, and inspect selected-day content from a tighter right-side panel layout.
Vision Boards
Organize image and text cards with drag-and-drop positioning, resizing, inline editing, item color coding, and saved board filters.
AI Assistant
Run Pollinations text and image generation, keep chat state during navigation, archive conversations, save outputs to notes, and push generated images into vision boards or local media.
Design language
Section titled “Design language”The app’s theme system exposes four modes, but the default for v1.1.0 is Midnight with a Rose Pink accent. That default gives you:
- a dark layered background with subtle depth gradients
- frosted-glass panels controlled by a glass intensity slider
- pink as the active accent for links, highlights, buttons, and focus states
- a modern dense workspace layout designed for long-form use
This docs site borrows that same visual direction so the transition from docs to product feels natural.
Local-first by default
Section titled “Local-first by default”Notara no longer assumes a Supabase backend or a mandatory sign-in flow. In the current release:
- desktop builds automatically write into the Tauri app-data workspace
- browser builds use browser storage when local files are unavailable
- optional Supabase auth only activates if
VITE_ENABLE_AUTH=true - optional integration adapters for GitHub, Google Drive, and Dropbox remain in the codebase as a legacy subsystem rather than a required workflow
Technology snapshot
Section titled “Technology snapshot”| Layer | Details |
|---|---|
| Frontend | React 19.1.1, TypeScript 5.5.3, Vite 7.3.1 |
| Routing | React Router 7.9.2 |
| Styling | TailwindCSS 3.4.17, shadcn/ui, Radix UI |
| Desktop | Tauri 2.10.x with FS, HTTP, dialog, and log plugins |
| AI transport | Pollinations via web proxy routes or Tauri native HTTP |
| Persistence | Tauri app-data workspace, browser localStorage, and File System Access API where available |
What changed in v1.1.0
Section titled “What changed in v1.1.0”The current release is where Notara’s identity sharpened. Highlights include:
- midnight plus pink as the default visual setup
- broader glass styling and adjustable frost intensity
- Linux and Windows desktop distribution
- Docker delivery for self-hosted web runtime
- improved markdown preview and save workflows
- stronger AI settings, persistence, and save targets
- richer vision board editing and filtering
For exact release details, see Release Notes.