14 releases · v1.1.12 current
Roadmap
What is being worked on, what is next, what is being thought about, and what has been decided against. Nothing here has a date on it: a one-person roadmap with dates is a promise broken in public.
Now
The work actually in hand. Two of the three came from one reader with a 5,550 note vault, which is the argument for telling me when something is slow.
Very large vaults
A reader opened Skein on 5,550 notes and waited minutes. First open is now done in the background, the watcher reloads only what changed, and the sidebar is a native list rather than a SwiftUI one. What is left is measured rather than guessed: expanding a big folder and opening a note still cost seconds on his machine, and that is the number being cut.
Notes kept in iCloud Drive
If your vault is in iCloud Drive and macOS has offloaded the files, opening it downloads them, and Skein used to sit there looking broken while that happened. It now says what it is doing and how far through it is. Handling the offloaded case properly, rather than blocking on each file, is the rest of it.
Guarding the file, not just fixing it
A picture in a note is held in the file as Markdown and shown to you as a picture, and for two days a bug threw that Markdown away as you typed. It is fixed, and the honest problem is that three separate pieces of code touch that one piece of information. A check that fails the build when a fourth one forgets is what stops the same class of fault returning.
Next
Each of these is the missing half of something that already ships. Finishing what exists beats starting what does not, and it makes this list checkable against the app rather than aspirational.
Back and forward, per pane
Follow a link, then get back where you were, in the pane you were in rather than the one you last touched. Tabs and splits exist; the history behind them does not yet.
The graph as a whole tab
The local graph is a panel beside what you are reading, which is what it is for. Opening the same view full width, with room to walk out further from the note you started at, is the piece still missing.
Properties as a form
Frontmatter is shown as a table you can edit and every query reads it. A proper inspector, where a date is a date and a list is a list rather than text you have to type correctly, is the missing half.
Quick Look and Shortcuts
Your notes are already indexed by Spotlight. Previewing one from the Finder with the spacebar, and driving Skein from the Shortcuts app, are the two native pieces left. Both need a separate app extension, which is why they are not a quick job.
Later
Wanted, not started. No order implied within the list, and no promise that all three arrive.
Noticing a rename made elsewhere
Rename a note inside Skein and its history, its canvas cards and the links to it all follow. Rename the file in the Finder and Skein sees a note that vanished and a new one that appeared. Telling those apart reliably is harder than it sounds and is not solved yet.
Mathematics
LaTeX in notes. It is worth saying plainly that this is parity rather than an advantage: everyone else has it, it is expensive to do well on a Mac, and it waits behind the things nobody else has.
Block references and transclusion
Pointing at one paragraph inside another note, and pulling that paragraph into a third. Deep work, and squarely the territory Obsidian and Logseq already hold, so it is honest to call it wanted rather than coming.
Not planned
Things people reasonably ask for and will not get. This is the section that earns the other three, and it matters more here than on the other two sites: an app with no plugins owes you a list of what it has decided against, because you cannot add any of it yourself.
Plugins
Permanent, and the most important line on this page. Every feature is in the app when you download it, which is what makes it possible to say the app does not talk to a network and to mean it. A plugin system would hand that promise to somebody else.
A sync service, or a publish service
Put your vault in iCloud Drive or Dropbox and it syncs like any other folder. There is no Skein account to make, no server holding your notes, and no subscription to sell you, which is also why the launcher is a launcher rather than a sign-in screen.
Themes
Light and dark, following the system, and no theme gallery. The look of the app is a decision that was made rather than a setting handed to you, and a thousand community themes is what a workshop looks like, not a desk.
The bolted-on extras
A web browser inside the notes app, a slide deck maker, an audio recorder, a random-note button, tab groups and saved workspace layouts. Each is somebody's favourite and none is what a knowledge manager is for.
Anything with AI in it
Nothing in Skein sends your notes anywhere, because nothing in Skein talks to a network at all. That is a stronger claim than a privacy policy and it only stays true by refusing this.
iPhone and iPad versions
Skein is a Mac app and will stay one, so the Mac version keeps the attention.
Recently shipped
The last three. This list is generated from the release notes, so it cannot fall behind the app.
1.1.12
Typing in a note with a picture in it was destroying the picture. Also: typing is eight times cheaper.
1.1.10
One Markdown engine behind the editor, reading mode and export - and a frontmatter bug that was deleting tags.
1.1.9
Big folders open instantly, and search shows you what it found.
All 14 releases, in full, on What’s new.
This order is not fixed. Something a reader actually needs beats something on the list, and several of the entries above arrived that way: tell me what is missing.