Hi HN!

I've been building this solo for about three and a half years. I kept trying every new project/notes tool (Notion, Asana, Trello, etc.) and always ended up back in a plain text file. I wanted something that felt like a text editor on first touch but could grow into real structure when you needed it.

https://lightwave.so (desktop only)

The tech stack is Laravel, MySQL, Redis, and hand-rolled JavaScript on the client. No frameworks like React/Vue/etc. ~270 lines of jQuery (out of 80k+ total LOC) for a few legacy DOM utilities, plus IndexedDB for local persistence. Real-time collaboration uses a hybrid approach: HTTP/2 POST for resilient ops + WebSockets via Laravel Reverb for live cursors, presence, and edits.

This is a pre-release stress test, not a launch. Lightwave will be a paid product. Right now I'm opening it up because no amount of solo testing replicates getting punched in the mouth by real traffic.

The link above has a button to create a test account in 1 click.

Known rough edges: the cursor and selection system are built from scratch (like VS Code, not a contenteditable wrapper), so there's a lot of surface area. Some keyboard shortcuts may be missing. Desktop only, accessibility not yet implemented. I'm shipping fixes in real time.

There's a "Submit Bug or Feedback" button inside the app if something breaks. Happy to answer any questions about the architecture, or anything else.

Some highlights:

- Paste markdown in, get native blocks. Copy blocks out, get markdown back.

- Hierarchical document, structure. Hierarchichal file manager.

- Live collab with shared cursors, selection, and presence.

- Code blocks with syntax highlighting. LaTeX math blocks.

- Full data export: markdown, JSON, and attachments. No lock-in.

- Full undo/redo with cursor restoration.

Show HN: Lightwave – Real-time notes app, 3.5 years of hand-rolled JavaScript