Novi Notes
Your notes become AI memory. Local-only, no subscription.
105 followers
Your notes become AI memory. Local-only, no subscription.
105 followers
Novi Notes isn't just a note app — it's a local AI memory layer for your Mac.
Any AI on your machine can instantly read and write your notes. Open Claude or any MCP client and ask. No API keys, no cloud, no config.
Rich block editor with 15 block types, wiki links, backlinks, daily notes, manuals, and post-its. Knowledge flows from quick capture to polished reference — AI works across the entire lifecycle.
One-time purchase. No subscription, ever. Your data never leaves your Mac.
Novi Notes
Hey everyone! 👋 I'm Hojong, the solo developer behind Novi Note.
Why another note app?
I'm a backend developer working across TypeScript, Kotlin, and Swift every day — jumping between different IDEs and projects constantly. When I started using Claude Desktop and Claude Code in my workflow, something unexpected happened: markdown files started piling up everywhere. Skills, agent configs, project notes, CLAUDE.md files — scattered across dozens of project directories. Version controlling them was a nightmare, and every time I set up a new project, I had to dig through old folders to find and reconfigure everything.
I needed one place to keep it all together. Meeting notes, code snippets, daily logs, reference manuals — not spread across 15 different repos.
So I tried everything. Notion, Obsidian, Evernote, Bear, SimpleNote, even Coggle for mind maps. They're all genuinely great tools. But either they required a subscription for the features I needed, or they couldn't quite match the workflow I had in mind.
So I thought: why not just build the note app I actually want?
And here's the funny part — after spending months building Novi Note, I finally understood why those other apps couldn't do what I wanted. Turns out, building a note app that fits your exact workflow is... really, really hard. 😅
What makes Novi Note different:
🤖 AI Native via MCP — Connect Claude to your notes with minimal setup. I worked hard to make the MCP configuration as painless as possible. Your AI can read, create, and organize your notes directly.
💰 One-time purchase — No subscriptions. Ever. That's a promise, not a marketing line.
🔒 Local-first — Your data stays on your Mac. No cloud dependency. Full offline support.
📋 Built for work — Daily notes, manuals, documents, post-its, calendar — the structure a working professional actually needs without Notion-level complexity.
I built this for people like me — developers who live in the terminal and IDE all day, use Claude as a daily companion, and just want a clean, private place to keep everything organized without fighting their tools.
Would love to hear your thoughts. What's your current note-taking setup? I'm genuinely curious!
@fresh_topping Congrats on the launch. Super excited about the local-first + AI combo. Just a quick q: what's one workflow challenge you ran into while making the Claude MCP setup truly painless for devs jumping between IDEs, and how'd you solve it?
Novi Notes
@swati_paliwal Thanks for asking! The biggest headache was definitely MCP zeroconfig — making it truly seamless with zero manual setup. On top of that, figuring out the right MCP commands to expose was a real design challenge. Too granular = confusing, too abstract = not powerful enough. Lots of trial and error to get it right 😅
Novi Notes
@randhir_kumar7 Thanks for the kind words! Great question.
Right now, Novi is a macOS-only app. I had iCloud Sync as a beta feature, but it turned out to be too unstable in practice, so I removed it. Rather than shipping something unreliable, I decided to explore better approaches.
I'm currently considering several sync options — GitHub-based sync, personal cloud storage (OneDrive, Google Drive, iCloud Drive), and leveraging users' own SaaS accounts. The goal is to find a method that stays true to Novi's local-first principle: your data syncs through infrastructure you already own, not through our servers.
In the meantime, your data is always safe and portable: one-click backup/restore to a single .novibackup file, and markdown export so your notes are never locked in.
Local-first AND one-time purchase? Take my money honestly. I've been bouncing between Obsidian and Apple Notes for months and neither fully clicks. The MCP integration with Claude is what got my attention though , being able to just talk to my notes without some janky plugin setup sounds great. Downloading now.
Novi Notes
@abdullah_mohamed14 That means a lot — welcome aboard! The Obsidian + Apple Notes combo is actually one of the most common setups I hear about. Powerful but fragmented.
Since the MCP integration caught your eye — once you open Novi, the MCP server is ready to go with Claude Desktop. No config files to edit, no API keys. Just connect and start talking to your notes.
If you run into anything or have ideas, feel free to reach out. Always happy to hear from early users!
Can I use my own AI key within the application?
Novi Notes
@natalia_iankovych Good question! Novi doesn't use API keys at all.
Instead, we built a local-first MCP (Model Context Protocol) server — your AI client connects directly to your notes with zero config. One click in settings, restart your AI app, done. Everything stays on your Mac. No cloud, no API keys, no data leaves your machine.
Currently we support Claude Desktop and Claude Code, with more AI clients (Gemini, ChatGPT, etc.) coming soon. No extra cost from us, no key management hassle.
Zero config setup is underrated — most note apps make you spend an hour tweaking before you can actually use them. How does it handle search across large note collections?
Novi Notes
@kaito_builds Thanks for the kind words on zero config — that's exactly the philosophy behind Novi!
Great question on search. Currently, Novi uses in-memory search with content caching, which works well for the workflow it's designed around.
The idea is that notes naturally flow upward: daily notes accumulate → get distilled into documents → documents mature into manuals → and eventually the polished content moves to your team's shared wiki. So rather than building up one massive archive that needs heavy indexing, content is continuously refined and promoted through stages.
That said, search already covers daily notes, documents, manuals, post-its, and TODOs with highlighted snippets — and a full-text index is on the roadmap as the product grows.
Mailmodo
Looks interesting. What's the price?
Novi Notes
@aquib Thanks for checking it out! Novi is a one-time purchase of $4.99 on the Mac App Store — no subscription, no hidden fees. You pay once and own it forever.
That's a core principle, not just a pricing decision. AI features, updates, everything included.
Landon
The local first plus AI native angle is what makes this stand out. Most AI note apps still feel like something bolted onto an existing workflow. This actually treats AI as part of the process from the start, which is a meaningfully different thing to build.
It clearly isn't built for casual note-takers, and that's a strength. There's a specific kind of dev who lives inside Claude and their IDE all day, and this feels made for that person. Tight niche, clear fit.
One thought on messaging: zero config via MCP is genuinely powerful but lands a bit abstractly for someone scanning quickly. A simple before and after could do a lot of work here, something like scattered markdown across repos, one place Claude can actually use. That contrast makes the value obvious before anyone has to think about what MCP means.
Also curious how you're thinking about positioning as more AI clients emerge. Does Novi stay Claude first, or does the vision expand into something broader? That decision probably shapes everything about how you talk about it.
I spend a lot of time helping SaaS teams sharpen this kind of positioning, especially around launch, so this was a fun one to dig into. Would love to see where you take it.
Novi Notes
@copywizard Thanks Wisdom — really appreciate you digging into the positioning angle.
The before/after idea is spot on. "Scattered markdown across repos → one place Claude can actually use" is honestly a better pitch than anything on our landing page right now. That's going on the list.
On the Claude-first question: Novi is built on MCP (Model Context Protocol), which is an open standard — so the architecture is AI-neutral by design. Right now Claude Desktop and Claude Code are the only clients that support local stdio transport, which is what makes zero-config possible without any cloud relay. As more AI clients adopt local MCP, adding support will be straightforward since the core protocol is the same. So the answer is: Claude-first today by necessity, broader by architecture.
Thanks again for the thoughtful feedback.
@fresh_topping Framing Claude first as a wedge rather than a constraint is the kind of positioning move that looks obvious in hindsight and isn't at all in practice. That choice says a lot about how you're thinking about this.
What Novi is becoming feels less like a note app and more like a local AI memory layer, where the interface can shift but the knowledge stays anchored. That's a genuinely different category than most people will reach for on first glance, and it's worth making that story more explicit earlier.
The MCP integration is the piece with the most untapped narrative weight. Right now it reads like a feature. It lands harder as an outcome: any AI running locally can instantly understand and act on your notes. One framing is technical, the other is a promise.
Curious whether you see Novi staying rooted in notes or growing into something closer to a personal AI workspace.
Novi Notes
@copywizard Thank you — "local AI memory layer" is a better frame than anything I've used so far, and I'm going to steal it.
You're right that the MCP story currently reads as a feature. The shift I'm trying to make is exactly what you described: it's not "we support MCP," it's "any AI running on your Mac can instantly read and write your notes — no API keys, no cloud, no config." The protocol is the mechanism; the outcome is that your knowledge becomes accessible to whatever AI you choose, without leaving your machine.
To your question: Novi will stay rooted in notes. The content lifecycle — daily notes → documents → manuals — is the backbone. But the layer underneath is already something closer to what you're describing. When Claude reads your daily notes and drafts a weekly report, or searches your manuals to answer a question, the notes are functioning as a local knowledge base that AI can act on. So I'd say: the interface stays a note app, but the architecture is already a personal AI workspace. I just need to make that story more visible.
The honest constraint is that I'm a solo dev, so the workspace vision expands through depth (richer AI interactions with the same note structure) rather than breadth (adding dashboards, kanban boards, project management). That's a deliberate choice, not a limitation.
@fresh_topping Interface versus architecture is the distinction worth holding onto. It stays a note app and becomes an AI workspace. Underneath is a strong foundation; it just needs to be made explicit from the moment someone first encounters it.
The depth over breadth point is sharper than it sounds too. Adding surfaces is how most tools try to win. Making a single surface dramatically more powerful is a different philosophy entirely, and a harder one to copy.
The framing that might express it cleanest: notes that don't just store information but become something AI can actively work with. That's where it starts to separate from Notion or Obsidian, which are still mostly passive systems waiting to be searched.
The interesting thing is you're not really competing in an existing category at that point. You're closer to defining a new layer, and that's a very different conversation to be in.