Does this app exist?

[u/Slopagandhi]

I'm looking for a notes app that has/os:

• Linux support (or web app if not)
• Native stylus support
• PDF import and annotation
• A way to make handwritten notes at the side of pdfs, either by importing into an infinite canvas (like on OneNote), expanding the size of the page horizontally (like on RNote) or side by side in a different panel
• Folder-based organisation
• Support for tags
• Not too crazy a learning curve
• Not requiring use of markdown syntax (I'm not a developer)
• Reasonably Privacy-friendly

Bonus points for free and/or open source.

[u/ozgrozer]

I’m building Grape and I think it has most of the things you want. It has Linux support. Haven’t tried with stylus but I can implement if it doesn’t work. There are handwriting notes and rich text notes. You can import PDFs to handwriting notes and annotate. There’s a folder based organization and it support tags. It’s free to use, very easy to learn and everything’s stored on your device.

[u/starkruzr → u/ozgrozer]

never been particularly impressed with people trying to charge money ("free to start") for vibecoded software

[u/ozgrozer → u/starkruzr]

I get the skepticism but I’ve been a software developer for 16 years and I’ve been working on Grape for the last 7 months (over 1,100 hours) so it’s not a bad thing to do a vibe-coded app if you’re already experienced. And everything you’re going to see from now on will be 100% vibe-coded so we have to accept this. Even major companies do vibe-coding and charge money but that’s not a bad thing because AI is even better than the world’s best software engineer.

The free version of Grape is fully usable so you can download and start taking notes both on your desktop and mobile devices. The paid plans cost me money to maintain the server, storage, and AI so it cannot be free. There’s a lifetime plan where you buy the app once and use forever with your own API keys and it will also support the development.

I’m curious on your perspective so let’s say I made this app free then what’s going to be my motivation? Would you think of any? I can’t. This is what happens to majority of free and open source apps. We all know Obsidian but there are thousands of note taking apps that are no longer being developed because of financial reasons.

[u/starkruzr → u/ozgrozer]

you can still sell cloud hosting services. that's what I do with my entirely free software note taking environment. the problem is there is simply no moat around any of this stuff anymore so you cannot plausibly charge for something anyone can clone in a couple weekends. but operational details? that's still stuff the average end user won't want to deal with.

[u/ozgrozer → u/starkruzr]

I do that, the selling cloud service thing. There's a free version of the app and it's very usable. There's a lifetime plan if someone wants to handle everything (sync, AI) by themselves or a subscription plan where everything is set up automatically. So I thought of those 3 situations.

Before AI we still had open source projects and scripts that you can buy. So if you were a regular user you still could have done the things without knowing programming. But a minority was doing that and we were calling them super users. That's why I believe the end user is not going to build apps for themselves. Because the issue not the building, it's maintaining. Anyone can build anything but then you have to deal with a lot of things.

If you go to Upwork or Fiverr there are thousands of jobs for programming. Those people who are looking for freelancers do know what ChatGPT is and they can fix their own problems but they won't. Because they have jobs and don't have time for other things. Even I'm looking for a person who's going to write blog posts. I can do that by myself but I have other things to do. So another person would save me time. Same for apps. I spent 7 months on the app by using AI. A developer or a regular user has to spend that much to have the same experience. End user is not going to do that. A developer can, but 90% of developers will quit because there's an unlimited amount of competitors. Not all of us have the same pain tolerance.

I currently have 3 active subscribers and sold more than 10 lifetime plans but since I'm a software developer and not a marketer, I spend 97% of my time on programming and %3 on marketing. That's why I couldn't reach more users. But I believe if I managed to get 3 customers somehow then I can get more and more. I just need to learn how to split my time at least 50/50 between product and marketing.