Knopo

A native (AppKit, no Electron) macOS outliner in the Logseq tradition - your notes are blocks, pages are trees of blocks, and everything lives as plain Markdown files you own. Local-first, no account, no lock-in: the app is just a fast index and editor over a folder of .md files. Close Knopo and your graph is still a readable, greppable, git-able directory of Markdown.

Features

• Outliner editing - every block is a node: Enter splits, Tab/Shift+Tab indent/outdent, Alt+↑/↓ move, click a bullet to zoom in, click the triangle to fold. Markdown renders inline; the focused block shows raw source.
• Plain Markdown, byte-stable - each block maps to a line in the file, and an untouched block re-serializes exactly as written, so round-tripping never churns your files.
• Page links [[Page]] - with stub pages, link autocomplete, and graph-wide rename that rewrites every reference.
• Block references & embeds - ((block-id)) to point at a block, {{embed …}} to transclude a block or page read-only.
• Tags #tag - labels (not pages), with a generated, click-through tag view.
• Queries {{query …}} - a live, read-only result list from a small closed filter language: tags, page references, task state, and properties combined with and / or / not.
• Journal - a daily-notes home that scrolls back through previous days.
• References - linked and unlinked references surfaced per page.
• Search & find - ⌘K full-text search across the whole graph (SQLite FTS5), ⌘F find within the current view.
• Right sidebar - ⌘/Shift-click opens pages and tag views as side-by-side cards for reference work.
• TODO / DONE blocks and slash commands (/link, /date, /embed, …).

Some smaller touches: favourites & recents, content zoom, adjustable line spacing, and block background colors.

Why it exists

A fast, low-footprint, files-stay-yours outliner:

• Your files, forever - Markdown is the source of truth and the app is disposable. The graph stays readable, greppable, git-friendly, and byte-stable, so editing never churns your files.
• Scales without bloating - the whole graph is never held in RAM; pages load on demand, so memory and startup stay flat as the graph grows.
• Fast everything - a rebuildable SQLite index (.knopo/cache.db) backs search, backlinks, tags, and queries, keeping navigation cheap on large graphs.
• Native, not a browser - AppKit/SwiftUI, no Electron: small footprint, quick launch, and platform-native text editing and scrolling.

How it compares

	Obsidian	Logseq	Roam Research	Workflowy	Craft	Knopo
Open source	✗	✓	✗	✗	✗	✓
Native (no Electron)	✗	✗	✗	✗	✓	✓
Local-first markdown	✓	✓	✗	✗	✗	✓
Outliner (block tree)	✗	✓	✓	✓	✗	✓
Block references	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Embeds / transclusion	✓	✓	✓	✓	✗	✓
Queries	✗	✓	✓	✗	✗	✓
Plugins	✓	✓	✓	✗	✓	✗

The closest neighbour is Logseq - same outliner model, open source, block references, embeds, and queries - but Electron. Knopo trades Logseq's cross-platform reach for a single-platform native app: smaller footprint, faster launch, and platform-native text editing and scrolling.

Status

Early but very useable. On-disk conventions may still change.

Graph layout

A graph is a directory. Knopo lays out and maintains:

<graph>/
  pages/         # one Markdown file per page
  journals/      # one file per day
  assets/        # pasted/linked images and files
  .knopo/      # rebuildable cache (SQLite index, config) - safe to delete

The Markdown files are the source of truth; .knopo/ is derived and can be regenerated at any time.

Build / test / run

A Swift Package - builds with the Command Line Tools, no Xcode required.

swift build                                    # build
./scripts/test.sh                              # run the test suite (Swift Testing)
KNOPO_GRAPH=/path/to/graph swift run Knopo # run against a graph folder

KNOPO_GRAPH defaults to ~/Documents/Knopo; the folder is created and seeded on first launch. To produce a double-clickable .app, see scripts/build-app.sh.

Running a downloaded build

This app is not notarized, so macOS Gatekeeper blocks a downloaded copy on first launch. To run it, either:

• strip the quarantine flag - xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /path/to/Knopo.app, or
• open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.

On macOS 15 (Sequoia) the old Control-click → Open shortcut no longer bypasses Gatekeeper for un-notarized apps; use one of the above.

Building from source avoids this entirely - a locally built .app isn't quarantined - but needs the Swift toolchain (the Xcode Command Line Tools).