I've spent the last 10 months building Beauty: a local, powerful greco-roman Markdown editor where the page looks finished while you type. It runs on the Mac, iPhone and in the browser, and the browser version opens without an account: https://app.markdown.beauty
I was frustrated with writing apps, and like most I used Apple Notes. After 2+ years immersed in Cursor, Codex and CC, I wished some interactions existed in a text editor.
The Markdown renders in place as you write it, including tables (which you can drag and resize without lining up pipes), KaTeX math and Mermaid diagrams. A lot of thought went into typography and the writing experience.
Your notes on the Mac are plain .md files in a folder with images next to them, so they open in anything else too. Each note keeps 200 versions. If you share a note with a link it syncs peer to peer over WebRTC while someone has it open, and the server that connects you only ever sees a random room id.
Most of the ~1,000 commits went into the editor itself. It's a contenteditable, and I don't let the browser restructure the document at all, which was a lot more work than I expected. Building this to be performant and cross-platform required some novel approaches, which I'll later open source. The editor is free with no account or ads, and there's an optional subscription for sync through your own iCloud.
Hey,
I quickly tried your editor and even when the writing experience is the most important thing, I have to admit it looks really lovely! I love the design and how it interacts. That is cool. Maybe you could add some more color options (not everyone likes the newish beige-toned interfaces).
Cool that even flowcharts are supported.
The only thing I miss in the block options would be a callout and the option to set a color for that callout.
So far my first impressions :)
Hell yeah, someone finally got notes right. I don’t say this lightly, but notes are supposed to be simple, fast and easily retrieved.
Apple Notes doesn’t give us nearly enough. Notion gives way too much. Obsidian is a mess. Craft, AnyType, etc are janky, gimmicky or slow.
You managed to make something simple, local, that gives us exactly the features we need for writing and finding notes and also MCP so I can point my agent to it?! I’d give you a fcking nobel prize for this lol
There's no revenue model, no clear goal. This app is a creative outlet and a sandbox to try ideas. I added an in-app purchase as a test to see if anyone cares, it would motivate me to keep working on it.
Without the constraints of a usual project, I feel I'll actually work on it for a much longer time.
I didn't add any story or personal background because I didn't think anyone would care, but good idea! In the meantime, you can follow along on x: @thiago_peres
I was frustrated with writing apps, and like most I used Apple Notes. After 2+ years immersed in Cursor, Codex and CC, I wished some interactions existed in a text editor.
The Markdown renders in place as you write it, including tables (which you can drag and resize without lining up pipes), KaTeX math and Mermaid diagrams. A lot of thought went into typography and the writing experience.
Your notes on the Mac are plain .md files in a folder with images next to them, so they open in anything else too. Each note keeps 200 versions. If you share a note with a link it syncs peer to peer over WebRTC while someone has it open, and the server that connects you only ever sees a random room id.
Most of the ~1,000 commits went into the editor itself. It's a contenteditable, and I don't let the browser restructure the document at all, which was a lot more work than I expected. Building this to be performant and cross-platform required some novel approaches, which I'll later open source. The editor is free with no account or ads, and there's an optional subscription for sync through your own iCloud.
https://www.markdown.beauty
Hey, I quickly tried your editor and even when the writing experience is the most important thing, I have to admit it looks really lovely! I love the design and how it interacts. That is cool. Maybe you could add some more color options (not everyone likes the newish beige-toned interfaces). Cool that even flowcharts are supported. The only thing I miss in the block options would be a callout and the option to set a color for that callout. So far my first impressions :)
Amazing project and execution. Makes my IDE's quickly-bolted-on (3 hours) .md support look ridiculous in comparison. Installed as PWA. Thank you!
Just tried it!
Hell yeah, someone finally got notes right. I don’t say this lightly, but notes are supposed to be simple, fast and easily retrieved.
Apple Notes doesn’t give us nearly enough. Notion gives way too much. Obsidian is a mess. Craft, AnyType, etc are janky, gimmicky or slow.
You managed to make something simple, local, that gives us exactly the features we need for writing and finding notes and also MCP so I can point my agent to it?! I’d give you a fcking nobel prize for this lol
It looks really nice. I definitely will use it.
Many questions come to mind: - What is the revenue model? - What is your personal story? Why you do not explain it in the site?
There's no revenue model, no clear goal. This app is a creative outlet and a sandbox to try ideas. I added an in-app purchase as a test to see if anyone cares, it would motivate me to keep working on it.
Without the constraints of a usual project, I feel I'll actually work on it for a much longer time.
I didn't add any story or personal background because I didn't think anyone would care, but good idea! In the meantime, you can follow along on x: @thiago_peres