Show HN: Octarine – a fast, lightweight, opinionated Markdown notes app
rajatkulk Friday, August 29, 2025
Hey 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).
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- 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)
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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).