Hi HN —

I built StillPoint because I wanted a calmer place to think.

I was a Zim wiki user for decades so I rewrote it, very opinionated :). There are no 'plugins' it's just all there, out of the way if you don't want it or just need it later.

Most tools I tried either felt noisy, cloud-bound, or split across too many apps (notes here, tasks there, planning somewhere else). I wanted one surface where journaling, organizing, project work, and task planning could live together — without locking my data into someone else’s system. Blazing fast and always available, etc. Being a consultant on several projects ... I need 'safe space' to keep my context (outside of all the noisy Jira's, Google, Teams/Microsoft, favorite client tool X....) that are client owned. It doesn't replace those, but allows me to keep 'my brain' and 'my context' and relevant links to those systems where/when needed.

StillPoint is a local-first Markdown workspace.

A great place to keep and organize all your notes (and increasingly those important LLM sessions). It's markdown native so very friendly to pasted output from the AI's.

Your vault is just folders and Markdown files on your disk. No accounts required. No mandatory sync service.

It’s designed to reduce friction:

Notes, tasks, and planning live in the same place

Tasks are written directly inside notes (- [ ]) and automatically parsed

Journal + calendar workflows are built in

Graph view lets you explore relationships between ideas

“Project mode” lets you zoom into a contextual slice of your vault

Focus mode removes UI noise for writing

Audience mode simplifies the screen for sharing or presenting

Keyboard-first navigation (optional vi-style mode)

Attachments live alongside pages. Templates keep structure lightweight. Search is fast and local.

AI is optional and opt-in. It can run against local models or hosted APIs, but the core app works entirely without it.

Under the hood, it’s built around a server model so multiple clients can operate on the same vault:

Desktop app (default)

Web UI

PWA for quick task updates and capture (still in progress)

There are two remote models:

Remote Vault:

Server stores plaintext Markdown

JWT-based authentication

Role-based access

Homebase (distributed model):

Encrypted object replication

Server stores opaque blobs

Client-side key derivation

Offline-first push/pull sync with conflict handling

Non-goals: SaaS hosting, real-time collaborative editing, proprietary sync service.

If StillPoint disappeared tomorrow, you would still have a folder of Markdown files.

Quickstart is in the README. No signup required.

I’d appreciate feedback — especially on the sync model and overall approach.

Show HN: StillPoint – local-first Markdown workspace with distributed sync