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Show HN: Tolaria – Open-source macOS app to manage Markdown knowledge bases

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Re: Show HN: Tolaria – Open-source macOS app to manage Markdown knowledge bases

#41

Post by smadam9 »

ericol wrote: post #39
smadam9 wrote: post #31

You beat me to it by a day! But well done Luca. The tool looks excellent and I'm trying it out now. I'm building Sig https://github.com/adamjramirez/sig-releases > and the architecture overlap is obvious: macOS, plain markdown, git-versioned, designed as context for AI agents. The difference is where in the workflow we start. Tolaria seems to excel at organizing knowledge that already exists. Sig is trying to solve w…

if "git versioned" means the .md files themselves, I'm sold. I am actually processing files using a git based workflow in order to tell claude what to look at. I'll definitely give this a spin.

Yes, the .md's are in their own repo, locally. The entire UI is a layer on top of that repo. The UI has some underlying mechanisms that abstract the git operations away from the user, but that doesn't stop a power user from jumping in the shell and accessing the repo directly.

The "magic" starts when Sig contributes to another, remote repo - a central knowledge base that all teammates' local Sig can pull from, and contribute toward.

Re: Show HN: Tolaria – Open-source macOS app to manage Markdown knowledge bases

#42

Post by dhruv3006 »

I love how you have used markdown here !

We kind of have used the exact philosophy in https://voiden.md/ - offline-first, file based and support for git.

This is exactly the format agents will use pretty well.

We have done this for APIs.

We are open source too. Take a look here : https://github.com/VoidenHQ/voiden

Re: Show HN: Tolaria – Open-source macOS app to manage Markdown knowledge bases

#43

Post by ItsClo688 »

smadam9 wrote: post #31

You beat me to it by a day! But well done Luca. The tool looks excellent and I'm trying it out now. I'm building Sig https://github.com/adamjramirez/sig-releases > and the architecture overlap is obvious: macOS, plain markdown, git-versioned, designed as context for AI agents. The difference is where in the workflow we start. Tolaria seems to excel at organizing knowledge that already exists. Sig is trying to solve w…

[flagged]

Re: Show HN: Tolaria – Open-source macOS app to manage Markdown knowledge bases

#44

Post by ItsClo688 »

not gonna lie - wow the 10k notes over 6 years thing is what got me! most knowledge base tools fall apart at that scale because the organizing system becomes the job. wondering do you ever just let something be unstructured, or does everything have to be tagged in?

Re: Show HN: Tolaria – Open-source macOS app to manage Markdown knowledge bases

#45

Post by gnabgib »

ItsClo688 wrote: post #44

not gonna lie - wow the 10k notes over 6 years thing is what got me! most knowledge base tools fall apart at that scale because the organizing system becomes the job. wondering do you ever just let something be unstructured, or does everything have to be tagged in?

I thought the thing that got you was "tolaria feels like a library"? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47884835

Re: Show HN: Tolaria – Open-source macOS app to manage Markdown knowledge bases

#47

Post by fiatpandas »

tarr1124 wrote: post #35
antonkochubey wrote: post #5

Doesn’t Obsidian already do pretty much the same?

Obsidian and these newer tools share markdown + local files, but they're aimed at different assumptions about who reads and edits the vault. Obsidian's default is "human reads and curates; plugins optionally enhance." The AI-first cohort (Tolaria, Sig in the sibling comment, and several others) assumes the AI reads and writes as a first-class agent, which makes design choices like how the app reacts to files changing…

It would be nice if you could “see” the AI in your vault making changes. Almost like a Google doc collab session. Even if you weren’t directly interacting with the agent, and it was making change thru a CLI/MCP, its presence would be highlighted in the frontend. And then it appears as its own contributor in the git history.

Re: Show HN: Tolaria – Open-source macOS app to manage Markdown knowledge bases

#48

Post by astrocat »

jimmcslim wrote: post #9
hoppyhoppy2 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>open-source

And I was going to say Mac native as well, but uses Tauri. I’d love some app with the polish of Bear Notes but that just edited raw Markdown files. Ideally Obsidian with the Notebook Navigator plugin (strongly inspired by Bear Notes perhaps?) and (checks list) this very specific list of plugins that I need and should be good for everyone else thanks.

> I’d love some app with the polish of Bear Notes but that just edited raw Markdown files.

Typora? (https://typora.io/)

Re: Show HN: Tolaria – Open-source macOS app to manage Markdown knowledge bases

#49

Post by dewey »

I often fall back to Apple Notes (I know not really a knowledge base, or markdown) because it syncs between my devices and it's usable on the phone. Is this something you have a need for yourself, or how are you looking at your notes on mobile?
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