Three things I’d judge it on

Most note apps ask you to build a system before you can put anything in them. Databases, accounts, sync, plugins, a settings screen with tabs. I wanted somewhere to put the things I learn, the things I am working on, and the things I have not figured out yet. Instead I kept ending up with a second job maintaining the place I put them.

So I built the smaller thing. Skein opens a folder of Markdown files and gets out of the way. Swift and AppKit rather than Electron, and it never touches the internet: no account, no sync service, no telemetry, nothing to collect.

If you already have an Obsidian vault, point Skein at the same folder. There is no import, because there is nothing to convert. It is the same files. That includes your canvases, which are stored in the open JSON Canvas format, so a board you edit in Skein still opens in Obsidian.

Part of why I started making Mac apps at all was how everything else had started to look. Web pages in windows, wearing the menu bar as a disguise. Skein is no different a reaction than the first two were. It also arrives with an advantage they did not have: it is the third app, and every lesson the other two taught me the hard way is already in it.

Three of those lessons are the whole design. If you try it, these are the things I would judge it on.

The graph is not a hairball

Every graph view I have used draws your entire vault as a spider’s web. It looks impressive in a screenshot and it tells you nothing. A picture of nine hundred notes is a picture of the fact that you have nine hundred notes.

Skein’s is local and deterministic. The note you are reading sits in the middle, with parents above, children below, siblings to one side and related notes to the other. The zones are worked out from your folders, your links and your headings, so there is nothing to tag by hand. Click any note to re-centre on it and walk outwards.

It is the neighbourhood around one idea rather than a map of everything, which is the only version of a graph I have ever actually used twice. Tell me if you disagree. I think it is the best thing in the app and I would like to know if I am wrong.

The text does not move while you type

Markdown renders as you write, so headings look like headings and bold looks bold. The important part is what drives it: styling comes from what is on the line, never from where your cursor is.

Most live-preview implementations reveal the syntax around the caret. That means the line reflows as you move through it and the punctuation hops about under your hands. It was the single thing I most wanted to avoid, and it is the reason the editor is built the way it is rather than the easy way. If you have ever sworn at a jumping cursor you will know why. If you would rather see raw syntax all the time, one setting turns it back on.

The same rule explains the rest of the editing surface. There is no formatting toolbar bolted above every note; a small bar appears when you select something and leaves when you deselect. Focus mode dims everything but the paragraph you are in, and typewriter mode keeps the line you are writing in the middle of the window. All of it is the same idea: the page should be still unless you moved something.

The canvas does not lag

An infinite board of cards, notes from your vault, pictures, links and groups, joined by labelled arrows, stored as plain .canvas files inside your folder. It draws only what is on screen, so panning a big board stays smooth instead of turning into a slideshow.

Double-click for a card, drag out of a card’s side for an edge, Command-G for a group, marquee to select, Command-F to find a card and glide to it. Drop a picture on it, or paste one straight from the clipboard. Click a note card and the note opens beside the board rather than replacing it, because the arrangement you made in order to think is not something you should have to rebuild every time you read one of the things in it.

There is no toolbar. The controls appear with your selection and leave with it.

What it costs you

Skein has no plugins at all. The features are simply present, and if one is not there you cannot add it. That is a real trade and it is worth saying plainly: if your workflow depends on community plugins, this will feel bare. I have written up why I think that is the right trade, and there is an honest comparison with Obsidian that includes the parts where Obsidian wins.

It is free. No subscription, no in-app purchase, no account, no paid tier holding anything back. There is a donate link in the app and on the site if you want to fund the time, and it unlocks nothing. I am obviously hoping you will like it enough to look at Verso and Nought, which are not free.

Where it stands

Early, but moving. It is 1.1.1 and I ship most weeks. The core is solid and I use it every day: vault, links, graph, search, canvas, version history. The edges are where you will find things, and I would expect the Markdown renderer and larger vaults to be where it hurts first.

I am one person in Brighton. Skein will update more slowly than apps with teams behind them, and I will not add every feature someone asks for.

The most useful thing you can do is point it at your real vault, especially a big one, and tell me what it gets wrong. Open your ugliest board in it: if Skein mangles a canvas or loses anything on save, I want to know the same day. Tell me where the editor stutters and at what size, what feels un-Mac, what you reached for and could not find. Anything that breaks, the weirder the better. I would rather you were honest than kind.

Then I am going to go and lie down in a folder I control.