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How I use Noteser

Noteser is a markdown notes app I built for myself first. Files live as plain .md in my own GitHub repo. The browser is the editor. There is no account, no upload, and no other server holds my notes.

This page is how I actually use it. The rules below are ones that survived a year of daily note-taking before noteser existed and got carried over.

Eight rules

  1. Files on disk, not in a database. Every note is a real .md file. If noteser disappears tomorrow my notes still open in any text editor.
  2. Folders for browsing, links for finding. Two top-level folders are enough. Everything else nests by intent, not by category.
  3. Capture first, organize later. I write into a daily note. If a thought grows, it gets promoted into its own file. Most do not.
  4. Wikilink before tag. A [[Person]] link is a real connection; a #tag is a query. I reach for links and only tag what I want to search across notes.
  5. One title field, no extra metadata. Frontmatter only when I genuinely need it. Most notes carry zero properties.
  6. Daily note as the universal scratchpad. Every day starts on daily/2026-06-01.md. Open work, things to check, things I read.
  7. Sync runs in the background. Every change pushes to GitHub. The repo IS the backup. I do not export.
  8. Mobile is for read + capture. I do not refactor notes on the phone. I drop a line into the daily note and revisit at the laptop.

Folders

Two top-level folders only:

  • daily/ for daily notes, weekly notes, monthly review.
  • notes/ for everything else: people, projects, references, ideas.

Anything that wants a third top-level folder is usually a tag instead.

Links

I use wikilinks the same way I use a search box: [[Person]], [[Project]], [[Concept]]. Noteser autocompletes from existing notes, so the link surfaces what is already there before I type.

When I cannot remember whether a note exists, I type the wikilink anyway. If autocomplete shows it, it exists; if not, I create the file from the link.

Rhythm

  • Daily. One note per day under daily/. Captures everything: tasks, notes, half-thoughts, links.
  • Weekly. A Sunday review note that pulls forward what is unfinished, drops what is no longer relevant, sets focus for the coming week.
  • Monthly. A short look back at goals, training, work, what shipped.

The weekly note has three fixed sections that never change. The format does the thinking I do not want to redo every Sunday.

Templates

A handful of templates I reuse:

  • Daily note (date + open work + done today + notes)
  • Weekly review (last week retro + this week + focus)
  • Project note (goal + status + open questions + log)

Templates are markdown files in notes/_templates/. Noteser's template picker reads from that folder.

Publishing

The vault lives in a public GitHub repo, so anything I want to publish I can render with a static-site generator. The plain .md files are a Jekyll, Hugo, or Astro site by default.

I have not turned that on yet for this vault. The option is there.

Why noteser exists

The system above is a direct lineage from kepano's How I use Obsidian. I built noteser because I wanted the same workflow without an Electron app and without a sync subscription. The files are the same; only the editor is different.

If you want to start, the getting-started guide walks through the first ten minutes. The changelog is what has shipped recently.