A single-file, offline notebook that lets you think fast, organize ideas, and stay portable
My desktop's power supply failed, so I'm back on the laptop. Inevitably I often encounter feeling and being disorganized, so I and took another run at Obsidian. I never quite stick with it; no amount of customization or "cool" graph view makes it useful beyond name-dropping connections.
I finally built the thing I've been overthinking for years: a dead-simple memex/Zettelkasten that encourages using the whole workspace instead of burying notes. It's modeled on the original slipbox, reimagined as stacks you can "stack" and order by position in the app, then combine into a single ordered output.
AI Disclosure: AI (ChatGPT4o in particular) was used in the creation of this project.
Synaps.ing is my take on a personal Zettelkasten: a browser-native notebook that runs as a single HTML/JS file, looks like parchment, and behaves like a well-organized desk ready for ideas. Notes are Markdown (.md) with lightweight JSON under the hood. Everything lives locally. Export/Import makes backups trivial. Link with [[note]]; make subnotes with >>subnote>>. Not mobile-friendly… I cannot at this time be bothered by responsiveness.
Core features
- Single-file, offline-capable notebook
- Linked Markdown with cross-stack navigation
- In-place hierarchies (convert note to subnote or parent note)
- Manual Save (with soft autosave (please manually export though))
- Export and import to JSON and Markdown
- Keyboard-first editing with quick commands
- Theme & Preferences (Parchment, Crisp, Lavender, Moss; lined/dots/grid)
- Book Builder (experimental): reorder stacks; export to PDF/HTML/Markdown/JSON; rewrite links for PDF
Project details
Role: design, build, LLM wrangler
Stack: ChatGPT4o, HTML + CSS + JavaScript
Timeline: thinking about it ~4 years; built v1.2 in ~1 week
Impact
- Portable by design: email it to yourself, throw it on a USB, keep moving
- A lean alternative to heavy PKM “cool, not actually functional” tools
- Made for thinkers, builders, and people that think best on index cards and notepads
You can use the single-file, offline-capable web app at synaps.ing