iWe — a native macOS app for your markdown knowledge base (alpha)

[gimalay]

iWe is a native macOS app for an IWE knowledge base — the same folder of plain markdown files the iwe CLI, the LSP server, and your editor already work on. It adds OS-native polished view into your knowledge base with VIM inspired keybindings.

This is an alpha: rough edges, missing pieces, and things that move between releases. Keep your knowledge base in git — it's plain markdown, so that costs nothing and makes any surprise reversible. Download the DMG from the release below; the app keeps itself up to date from there. Tell us what breaks.

https://github.com/iwe-org/iwe-mac/releases

[kiil]

Very cool!

[gimalay]

Thanks @cablehead! https://cablehead.github.io/xs/ looks very interesting!

[kiil]

Give it a try, it's built for VIM users :D

I would appreciate any feedback

Just did a quick test. I love the VIM inspired navigation! Very fast to navigate the document!

[gimalay]

Give it a try, it's built for VIM users :D

I would appreciate any feedback

Just did a quick test. I love the VIM inspired navigation! Very fast to navigate the document!

Great! I'm glad you like it. You can also edit at a block/word level and the cursor shows you what is the scope of the operation. I also like how smoothly it's all animated in native SwiftUI.

In comparison to VIM, native app can show images and diagrams in place which is a strong benefit as well as inline parent links and frontmatter properties on the inclusion links and in the document header (including editing properties in place).

[kiil]

Great! I'm glad you like it. You can also edit at a block/word level and the cursor shows you what is the scope of the operation. I also like how smoothly it's all animated in native SwiftUI.

The scope animations are actually very useful and yes - it is all very swift and smooth :)

In comparison to VIM, native app can show images and diagrams in place which is a strong benefit as well as inline parent links and frontmatter properties on the inclusion links and in the document header (including editing properties in place).

Yeah - I have neovim set up to do most of these things, but I must admit it took me a long while to get it all working, so there is huge benefit in having iWe, a "native" iwe editor where this kind of functionality just works right out of the box. Very good work, @gimalay :)

[kiil]

@kiil i'm super curious about your http-nu editor?! really cool project @gimalay

@cablehead I am doing a lot of different projects with http-nu these days, it is super useful. I've set claude code up to "get" the event sourcing architecture, and of course the docs for http-nu, xs and nushell.

Event sourcing is very good in conjuntion with genAI for automation and truly responsive interfaces 👍

I should really polish one or two of these projects and make them public :)

[supersnafu]

Awesome, let me know if you ever decide to build a Linux version too. Very happy to test :)

[gimalay]

Thanks for support! I would love to build Linux version at some point.

[kiil]

@gimalay I've used iWe a bit more.

Couple of things:

(Major) How do i link a word to a new note (extract) - I can do it for a header but what about a word or a line?

(Major) See the issue I submitted

(Minor) Part of the highlighted line disappears when resizing the window and making it smaller. This seemingly only happens for the cursored / highlighted line on lists - at least not in normal paragrah text.

(Minor) So, I do not have API access to claude because I use the monthly subscription. Is there a way to support this setup via login / auth or something?

[kiil]

it's getting really good :)

[gimalay]

Thanks @kiil, please let me know if you will see any issues and potential improvements. Appreciate your feedback.

[kiil]

@gimalay - is there a way to navigate the left sidebar by keyboard only?

[gimalay]

Not yet, but there will be one in the next release. Which I hope to ship tomorrow. I want to use CTRL-H and CTRL-L to move between "splits" (VIM style).

[gimalay]

Check the latest version; it includes keyboard navigation for the sidebar and a few more features.