Three years ago, I discovered a relatively new technology called Tauri. It felt cool—lightweight, cross-platform, perfect for building handy little tools. Back then, I didn't think too much about it; I just started coding. No business plan, no growth targets, just one thought: make it effortless for users (at that time, that user was myself).
Since I had a need for note-taking, I decided to start with my own requirements and develop a Markdown editor: MarkFlowy.
For the past three years, I've devoted almost all of my spare time to this project. Seeing people actually use it and genuinely find it helpful—that sense of fulfillment is something a salary can't provide.
But now, I'm feeling a bit lost.
In the AI era, the barrier to developing software has dropped significantly. For tool software, people might be more inclined to build their own solutions. There are more and more similar tools, and as I repeatedly review my own project, I increasingly struggle to see its unique qualities.
Three years ago, I thought the highlight worth mentioning was the lightweight nature and performance brought by the Tauri framework. Two years ago, I integrated AI and iterated on it as a standalone module. Currently, what I'm most satisfied with is the interface and editing experience.
But as I mentioned, with more and more similar software, the highlights I once thought were good no longer provide differentiation. In product terms, this is called a "moat"—without a moat, it's hard to stand out.
So today, I genuinely want to ask everyone a few questions:
• If you're still using this software, what exactly makes you reluctant to uninstall it?
• What needs do you truly have that other similar software hasn't addressed well?
• Do you think I should keep pushing forward?
No need for pleasantries—I accept both praise and criticism. If it's encouragement, I'll screenshot it and save it until retirement. Your suggestions might determine the capabilities of the upcoming 1.0 version, so I hope you can share more opinions and ideas.
Thank you to everyone who has downloaded, submitted issues, or starred the project over these three years. You are the entire reason I've made it this far.
Privacy collection does indeed need to be optimized. At that time, the main goal was to obtain the number of active users.
All the content in the server has not been deployed and has not been actually applied to the software. At present, this is only part of the plan. I will refer to the part you mentioned before supporting users to deploy it independently.
MarkFlowy has been independently developed for 2.5 years.Based on the design philosophy of being lightweight, simple, and highly available, it now boasts a considerable number of functions such as:
- *Local Priority*: MarkFlowy is a pure editor designed to edit your local content. The synchronization method is left to the user's choice. Currently, it provides a Git manager and will later integrate with other similar cloud storage services for synchronization. Feel free to provide feedback on this.
- *User Experience First*: It offers multiple editing modes, including source code and WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). Additionally, it supports custom themes. Furthermore, high performance is the foundation of a good user experience. MarkFlowy has a lightweight package size and specialized performance optimization. Real-world testing shows that on an M1 Mac device, editing documents with over 200,000 characters can still ensure smooth writing in both Chinese and English.
- *AI Support*: MarkFlowy integrates with multiple AI vendors such as Deepseek, Openai, and Ollama. It also supports using their features within the editor for tasks like Q&A, summarization, translation, etc., to enhance your writing efficiency.
- *Simplicity*: Out-of-the-box usability. You only need to familiarize yourself with Markdown syntax to use it easily. It also provides synchronization methods such as Git and a powerful file management tree.
Apart from these features, MarkFlowy can edit text files (txt), JSON files, and view image files, among other useful functions. We welcome everyone to experience, exchange ideas, and participate.
Since I had a need for note-taking, I decided to start with my own requirements and develop a Markdown editor: MarkFlowy.
GitHub repository: https://github.com/drl990114/MarkFlowy
You can also try it online on the official website: https://markflowy.cc
For the past three years, I've devoted almost all of my spare time to this project. Seeing people actually use it and genuinely find it helpful—that sense of fulfillment is something a salary can't provide.
But now, I'm feeling a bit lost.
In the AI era, the barrier to developing software has dropped significantly. For tool software, people might be more inclined to build their own solutions. There are more and more similar tools, and as I repeatedly review my own project, I increasingly struggle to see its unique qualities.
Three years ago, I thought the highlight worth mentioning was the lightweight nature and performance brought by the Tauri framework. Two years ago, I integrated AI and iterated on it as a standalone module. Currently, what I'm most satisfied with is the interface and editing experience.
But as I mentioned, with more and more similar software, the highlights I once thought were good no longer provide differentiation. In product terms, this is called a "moat"—without a moat, it's hard to stand out.
So today, I genuinely want to ask everyone a few questions:
• If you're still using this software, what exactly makes you reluctant to uninstall it?
• What needs do you truly have that other similar software hasn't addressed well?
• Do you think I should keep pushing forward?
No need for pleasantries—I accept both praise and criticism. If it's encouragement, I'll screenshot it and save it until retirement. Your suggestions might determine the capabilities of the upcoming 1.0 version, so I hope you can share more opinions and ideas.
Thank you to everyone who has downloaded, submitted issues, or starred the project over these three years. You are the entire reason I've made it this far.