Geode

An open-source, local-first Markdown knowledge base — a clean-room clone of Obsidian built from its public documentation. Your notes are plain .md files in a folder on your disk. Links between notes are first-class. No account, no cloud, no lock-in.

⚠️ Early alpha (v0.2). The core loop works — vaults, editing, wikilinks, backlinks, search, tags, reading view, community plugins/themes, a Web Viewer — but many features are still on the roadmap.

Features (v0.2)

• Vaults — open any folder; external edits are picked up live
• Editor — CodeMirror 6, markdown highlighting, [[wikilink]] autocomplete, Cmd/Ctrl+click to follow, autosave, rename-updates-links
• Reading view — callouts (13 types, foldable), embeds (notes/images/audio/ video), highlights, tags, tables, task lists, YAML properties
• Knowledge graph plumbing — backlinks pane, outline, tag pane, unresolved link styling, link resolution by shortest path and alias, graph view
• Search — tag: path: file: operators, quoted phrases, negation, regex
• Workspace — tabs, split panes, pinned tabs, collapsible sidebars, status-bar word count; tab bar and view header DOM/CSS match real Obsidian so community themes and CSS snippets apply correctly
• Command palette (Cmd+P), quick switcher (Cmd+O), daily notes (Cmd+D), dark/light themes via CSS variables
• Settings — tabbed Settings window (Appearance, Community plugins & themes, plus one tab per installed plugin that calls Plugin.addSettingTab)
• Community plugins & themes — install from GitHub, enable/disable, auto-update
• Web Viewer — open web pages in an in-app tab (webview-backed, its own session), plus a one-time "Import cookies from Chrome" option so viewer tabs open already logged in

Install

Prebuilt macOS installers (dmg + zip, Apple Silicon + Intel) are published on the Releases page whenever a v* tag is pushed. Windows and Linux builds aren't set up yet — see the roadmap item for packaging.

1. Download Geode-<version>-arm64.dmg (Apple Silicon) or Geode-<version>.dmg (Intel) from the latest release.

2. Open the dmg and drag Geode.app to Applications.

3. These builds are ad-hoc signed but not notarized (no Apple Developer ID yet). The ad-hoc signature lets the app launch on any Mac — including Apple Silicon, which refuses to run fully-unsigned apps — but Gatekeeper still shows an "unidentified developer" warning on the first launch of a downloaded copy. To open it:

   • Right-click (or Control-click) Geode.app → Open → Open again in the confirmation dialog (also available under System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway), or
   • Run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Geode.app in Terminal once, then launch normally.

   Full Developer ID signing + notarization (no warning at all) is a follow-up that needs a paid Apple Developer account.

Note: this repo is currently private. You'll need collaborator access to view the source or download release assets until it's made public.

Develop

npm install
npm run build      # bundle main/preload/renderer with esbuild
npm start          # launch Electron
npm run dev        # esbuild watch mode
npm run typecheck  # strict tsc
npm run dist        # package a local ad-hoc-signed macOS build (dmg + zip) into release/
npm run release     # same, plus publish to GitHub Releases (requires GH_TOKEN)

A demo vault lives in test-vault/.

Cutting a release

Push a tag matching v* (e.g. git tag v0.1.0 && git push origin v0.1.0) — the .github/workflows/release.yml GitHub Action builds ad-hoc-signed macOS installers and publishes them to a GitHub Release automatically. You can also trigger it manually from the Actions tab (workflow_dispatch) without cutting a tag, useful for testing the pipeline.

Documentation

The full reverse-engineered specification of the target feature set lives in docs/spec/ — core app behavior, all 30 core plugins, the plugin API surface, and on-disk file formats. It doubles as the project roadmap.

Legal

Geode is a clean-room implementation based solely on publicly available documentation. It contains no Obsidian code or assets. "Obsidian" is a trademark of Dynalist Inc.; this project is not affiliated with or endorsed by them. Licensed under the MIT License.