Knopo

A native (AppKit, no Electron) macOS outliner in the Logseq tradition - your notes are blocks, pages are trees of blocks, and everything lives as plain Markdown files you own. Local-first, no account, no lock-in: the app is just a fast index and editor over a folder of .md files. Close Knopo and your graph is still a readable, greppable, git-able directory of Markdown.

Features

• Outliner editing - every block is a node: Enter splits, Tab/Shift+Tab indent/outdent, Alt+↑/↓ move, click a bullet to zoom in, click the triangle to fold. Markdown renders inline; the focused block shows raw source.
• Plain Markdown, byte-stable - each block maps to a line in the file, and an untouched block re-serializes exactly as written, so round-tripping never churns your files.
• Page links [[Page]] - with stub pages, link autocomplete, and graph-wide rename that rewrites every reference.
• Block references & embeds - ((block-id)) to point at a block, {{embed …}} to transclude a block or page read-only.
• Tags #tag - labels (not pages), with a generated, click-through tag view.
• Queries {{query …}} - a live, read-only result list from a small closed filter language: tags, page references, task state, and properties combined with and / or / not.
• Tables - GitHub-style pipe tables render as a real grid, fitted to the window (or to their content, per table), with links and tags live inside cells.
• Journal - a daily-notes home that scrolls back through previous days.
• References - linked and unlinked references surfaced per page.
• Search & find - ⌘K full-text search across the whole graph (SQLite FTS5), ⌘F find within the current view.
• Right sidebar - ⌘/Shift-click opens pages and tag views as side-by-side cards for reference work.
• Windows & tabs - open several graphs at once, each in its own native window or tab (⌘T for a tab, Open Graph… to repoint one). The same graph open in two places stays in sync.
• TODO / DONE blocks and slash commands (/link, /date, /embed, …).

Some smaller touches: favourites & recents, content zoom, adjustable line spacing, and block background colors.

See the user guide for full documentation.

Why it exists

There's no shortage of outliners, and several are polished Logseq clones. Knopo exists for a different set of priorities. It's native macOS, no Electron. And it's opinionated: it keeps Logseq's block model where that's the right idea, but it isn't a clone and doesn't copy every Logseq decision. The bar is quality and stability over feature count - each feature is deliberate and vetted, not added just because another app has it.

What that looks like in practice:

• Your files, forever - Markdown is the source of truth and the app is disposable. The graph stays readable, greppable, git-friendly, and byte-stable, so editing never churns your files.
• Scales without bloating - the whole graph is never held in RAM; pages load on demand, so memory and startup stay flat as the graph grows.
• Fast everything - a rebuildable SQLite index (.knopo/cache.db) backs search, backlinks, tags, and queries, keeping navigation cheap on large graphs.
• Native, not a browser - AppKit and SwiftUI. Small, quick to launch, and edited in a real macOS text view (more below).

What native buys you

Knopo is a real macOS app, not a wasteful Electromonster. What that gets you:

• A real text editor - the block you're editing is an actual macOS text view, so typing feels like it does everywhere else on the Mac. Web-based editors rebuild native behaviour by hand and rarely nail it.
• Small and quick - no bundled browser, so it's a few megabytes, launches instantly, and stays light on memory and battery for something you keep open all day. (To be fair, that's mostly a dig at Electron, there are leaner web shells.)
• Fits the system - real macOS window tabs, and dark mode, accent color, and accessibility settings that follow the moment you change them.

The trade-off is reach: Knopo is macOS-only, where web apps run everywhere from one codebase.

How it compares

	Obsidian	Logseq	Roam Res.	Workflowy	Craft	Knopo
Open source	✗	✓	✗	✗	✗	✓
Native (no Electron)	✗	✗	✗	✗	✓	✓
Local-first markdown	✓	✓	✗	✗	✗	✓
Outliner (block tree)	✗	✓	✓	✓	✗	✓
Block references	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Embeds / transclusion	✓	✓	✓	✓	✗	✓
Queries	✗	✓	✓	✗	✗	✓
Plugins	✓	✓	✓	✗	✓	✗

The closest neighbour is Logseq - same outliner model, open source, block references, embeds, and queries - but Electron. Knopo makes the opposite platform bet (see What native buys you above): native and macOS-only rather than cross-platform.

Status

Early but very useable. On-disk conventions may still change.

Graph layout

A graph is a directory. Knopo lays out and maintains:

<graph>/
  pages/         # one Markdown file per page
  journals/      # one file per day
  assets/        # pasted/linked images and files
  .knopo/        # rebuildable cache (SQLite index, config) - safe to delete

The Markdown files are the source of truth; .knopo/ is derived and can be regenerated at any time.

Build / test / run

A Swift Package - builds with the Command Line Tools, no Xcode required.

swift build                                    # build
./scripts/test.sh                              # run the test suite (Swift Testing)
KNOPO_GRAPH=/path/to/graph swift run Knopo     # run against a graph folder

KNOPO_GRAPH defaults to ~/Documents/Knopo; the folder is created and seeded on first launch. To produce a double-clickable .app, see scripts/build-app.sh.

Running a downloaded build

This app is not notarized, so macOS Gatekeeper blocks a downloaded copy on first launch. To run it, either:

• strip the quarantine flag - xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /path/to/Knopo.app, or
• open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.

On macOS 15 (Sequoia) the old Control-click → Open shortcut no longer bypasses Gatekeeper for un-notarized apps; use one of the above.

Building from source avoids this entirely - a locally built .app isn't quarantined - but needs the Swift toolchain (the Xcode Command Line Tools).