Hello. This is the Binderus blog.

I've been building binderus for about a year. it's a free, local-first markdown notes app — Notion-style WYSIWYG editor on plain `.md` files you keep on your own disk. ~9 mb download, no account, no cloud lock-in, no subscription on the basics.

Up to now i've been quiet about it. shipped a release every couple of weeks, replied to discord, fixed the bug somebody hit. didn't write much. that worked when there were ten users. It doesn't really work anymore.

So here's a blog. One or two posts a week, give or take, about what I shipped, what broke, and what I'm thinking about next.

Why now#

A Linkedin post i wrote on monday — about shipping a static html publisher with backlinks, the same feature obsidian publish charges $10 a month for — picked up 500 views in the first 12 hours. that's nothing by tech-blog standards but it's an order of magnitude more than every other post on the account. the comments told me what i should have noticed earlier: there's a small but real audience that actually cares how a small notes app gets built, why a particular feature went in or didn't, and what the trade-offs were.

Linkedin is the wrong place for that. it's a feed. you get 1300 characters and then the post collapses. nothing's searchable a week later. so this blog is going to be the long-form home for the same conversation, with linkedin and the discord pointing back here.

Who i am#

I'm Van. I'm not a company. Binderus is one person project, a free desktop app, and a mac. The codebase is on github. I write the code, I answer the discord, I make the decisions. when i screw up, it's me. When something good ships, it's me too. that should be obvious from the voice.

Who binderus is for#

Honestly, anyone who writes things and wants to keep them forever. but if i had to pick the people who get the most out of it today:

Developers and Technical writers who want a notion-quality editor without committing their notes to a cloud they can't read
Obsidian users who like the local-first idea but feel the editor is too plain
Students and researchers who want one app for plain prose, code, math, diagrams, and tables — without 40 plugins to make it work
Evernote refugees still looking for the post-evernote app that doesn't lock them in again

The people for whom binderus is not a fit, and probably won't be soon: real-time collaborators, people who need cloud sync as the default, people who want generative-ai writing baked into the editor. i'm intentionally not building that last one. binderus is about writing your own thoughts, not generating someone else's.

What's actually in the app today#

I'd rather you click around than read a feature dump, so this is the short version:

Live wysiwyg markdown editor (no split pane), slash commands, tables, code blocks with language picker, latex math, mermaid diagrams, task lists, wikilinks, backlinks, callouts
Multi-vault, quick switcher (cmd+p), encrypted local database with passphrase, full-text search, custom themes (drop-in css with inheritance), favorites, tags
~9 mb download. starts in under a second. tauri + rust, not electron
Plugins: pomodoro timer, word count, AI Chat (cmd+l, openai-compatible — bring your own key, runs against ollama / lm studio / openai / together / openrouter / etc.), local html publisher
Export to docx, html, pdf
Macos, windows, linux. 10 ui languages including japanese, chinese, hindi, arabic
Works offline, all the time. no telemetry. no account.

What it does **not** have, in case you're shopping: cloud sync (use dropbox / onedrive / google drive on the data folder for now), mobile apps, real-time collaboration, ai writing features.

What this blog will and won't be#

**will be:**

- a feature shipped, with the actual reasoning behind why it went in and what got cut

- a bug story when an interesting one happens — what went wrong, what i learned, what i'd do differently

- the occasional product-philosophy piece when there's a real decision behind it (encrypted vaults, no AI in the editor, why tauri instead of electron, etc.)

- a once-a-month-ish public roadmap update with what's planned and what's slipping

**will not be:**

- launch announcements dressed up as content

- "10 ways binderus boosts your productivity" listicles

- ai-written copy. you'll hear my voice or you'll know

- engagement-bait threads. i'm here to write things that are worth re-reading, not impressions

The next post#

Post #2 is up today: the long-form version of the linkedin post about the local html publisher, including the architectural reason backlinks are so rare in static site generators. read it [here](/blog/local-html-publisher).

Try it#

Binderus 0.9.9 — [download](https://binderus.com/download) (free, ~9 mb, mac/windows/linux). [github](https://github.com/binderus/binderus). [discord](https://discord.com/invite/hqx7DSq8J6) — i'm in there pretty much every day.

if you've used it and have something to say, the easiest thing is to drop a note in the discord. or reply to me on linkedin. or open an issue. or just mail binderusapp@gmail.com - I read all of them.

- Van