Mastodawn

Freezerburn May 31, 2025

I don't tend to talk much about anything I work on, and I figure I should probably change that.

I've recently started working again on an app idea that has its grip firm on my brain: What if a note taking app was just like sending texts to yourself (or similarly: like posting to social media, but private)? There are a few apps in this design space that I know of: StrFlow, Journelly, and Minders being the main ones I know are under active development. But none quite hit what I'm looking for yet, so I'm going to try and make what I want myself.

I'm using #Flutter to build this, and have a long way to go. I can send messages that are stored persistently in SQLite. The input field can format some amount of markdown, and the chat bubbles have more full support for it. (using a library for the chat bubble rendering, but having to make my own input field) Just added a basic search.

I'll try to post little bits of progress as I make them.

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Freezerburn May 31, 2025

A little bit of a worry I have in the back of my mind is that because I'm taking so much, er, "inspiration" from Apple's Messages (and I have more plans based on it) that they'll get a bit upset at me looking too much like their app. At some point I'll probably try to modify the design in some way to differentiate it enough to not be easily confused with Messages by an average person.

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Freezerburn

One of the big ideas I have guiding me for why I want to make my own app: I really want a place I can just put *everything*. And have the app understand that stuff deeply. Along with the ability to build some level of linking/replies between "texts" easily.

An example of what I mean when I say understanding stuff deeply: I've used Evernote for years. When you attach almost anything into Evernote, it manages to pull data out of that thing for search. Whether it's a PDF, Word Document, or more recently audio files. The ability to search scanned text/handwriting in a PDF no matter how it's in the PDF is really nice. I want to build that same kind of thing into my own app, but with better performance and easier to just dump unstructured thoughts into.

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Freezerburn May 31, 2025

Also no freaking AI.

If I ever consider adding some kind of "AI" into this app, it's going to be a completely local model. And *IMPORTANTLY*: It'll have an off button. No bugging you to turn it on or use it. If I add in any kind of "nag", it would be literally the first time you open the app after it gets added it'll ask "Hey do you want this?" and you can just say "no" and it goes away forever.