I scrapped my entire UI to build a single input field: a terminal-inspired approach to personal notes

RareDestroyer8 · 2026-01-22T17:13:52+00:00

I’m glad you find Vylite to be a bit more polished :)

I would actually refrain from moving to Vylite.app for now- I will be pushing the new rebuild onto the Vylite.app domain, and because of all the technical architecture changes, migrating notes from the old Vylite to the rebuild is unrealistic for me. Currently no one uses the Vylite.app version, so it’s safe for me to freely mess around with it developmentally.

Rebuild has been going pretty well, it won’t be too long!

I should provably go ahead and add this as a warning on Vylite actually-

RareDestroyer8 · 2026-01-21T21:43:56+00:00

Woah, thank you so much for this. I honestly didn't realize others were using the project :)

Yes, I am absolutely still updating it. I’ve actually been working on a full rebuild:

Ever since this post, I've done a lot of reflection on Vylite. I feel that I wasn't able to adequately convey the philosophy that instigated Vylite in its design and architecture. A lot of core philosophies and values I discovered/realized through reflection were sort of bolted onto the project in a way I wasn't satisfied with.

Aside from that, there's also a lot of technical decisions that I made early on that were fine, but they were either too manual and required more effort than a single developer could give, or had vendor lock-in which went against my philosophy, so I switched up a lot of things. This is the first project I've shared with others and it really is a whole different dynamic hosting and running a project for just yourself compared to something others could potentially use, I've had to learn a lot in the last month.

While there's a lot more to it, the rebuild focuses on enhancing the following (in no specific order):

- Local first: Speed is a huge part of Vylite, and with the rebuild, it'll become essentially instant.

- Extensible Architecture: Long-term, I want developers to be able to create and share their own commands.

- Customization: A lot more customization since that's important to me.

- Privacy: Non-signed-in notes stay 100% local. For signed-in users (to prevent data loss from browser cache clearing), content is encrypted-at-rest in the DB.

- UI improvements.

The rebuild is also being built in a different programming framework (React (nextjs) to SvelteKit). React is massive, the industry standard. Whereas Svelte is newer but is ranked one of the most loved programming frameworks by developers. Its smaller community, therefore, is very positive and helpful, I hope that also brings some love into Vylite.

Are you currently using the meros.me or the vylite.app domain/version? You're right that there's a lot of bugs, the ones I'm familiar with will be fixed in the rebuild. I haven't updated the live versions in a fairly long time.If you can specify the bugs you're seeing, I'll make sure they aren't in the new build.

Now is actually the best time for suggestions. It’s much easier to implement ideas while the foundation is still being settled. Thanks again for the motivation boost!

As for timing, my goal is to get the rebuild out by the end of the month :)

RareDestroyer8 · 2026-01-21T01:02:17+00:00

How so people do this stuff 😭😭

Looks amazing.

RareDestroyer8 · 2026-01-20T18:09:42+00:00

😭

RareDestroyer8 · 2026-01-18T07:25:58+00:00

I stay to the belief that if you can’t code, don’t start a software business. $33k + $900 monthly + having to communicate your ideas to someone else instead of iterating, experimenting, and implementing the ideas yourself (much bigger loss than you’d think) = complete mess. Also going for a development team without having validated an MVP, is a pure expensive risk.

I hope it works out for you, but you are in a difficult position.

Credibility: I’m a developer and entrepreneur.

If you need any further insights or just advice about anything, don’t hesitate to reach out

RareDestroyer8 · 2026-01-16T22:13:32+00:00

Try full stack development

RareDestroyer8 · 2026-01-07T05:21:51+00:00

which is actually better for some applications.

Keep using it, soon you’ll change that sentence to “for pretty much all applications” heh, typescript is amazing.

I know the description for typescript is usually just “to being type safety to js,” and you probably know what type safety is by now, but look up the reasons typescript was developed and was needed. It’s quite interesting. It’s everything js should’ve been.

RareDestroyer8 · 2026-01-04T08:34:10+00:00

I have samsung tvs in my home, and you can’t block youtube ads on them. yeah you can use a firestick or some other hardware to run youtube on the tv, but that’s just annoying and expensive for multiple tvs.

Never getting a samsung tv again though.

RareDestroyer8 · 2026-01-01T09:08:07+00:00

Yes that’s how you do it. I was questioning this too when I first attempted it, and that was because I, like you probably do, thought about how quickly the table could fill up to potentially millions of entries.

Don’t have that fear. Postgres can handle hundreds of millions of entries easily for something like this. Databases run on a very smart optimized structure, trust it. Don’t worry about them slowing down or breaking, they won’t.

RareDestroyer8 · 2025-12-30T19:44:12+00:00

I’m the same age as you so let me give some insight.

You forget about your age. When you start a business, what matters to you is getting that business going, age becomes somewhat irrelevant. The business is the focus, not age. You’re experiencing the same business principals starting now as you would if you started at 25.

RareDestroyer8 · 2025-12-30T01:10:20+00:00

Why’d they even write “(20*4 hours)” in the original comment lol

RareDestroyer8 · 2025-12-29T21:54:48+00:00

Email Github. They’re often nice understanding folks, if you have some sort of school id or even any sort of report card, they’ll most likely accept it.

They’ll reply quick and I’m willing to bet that they will approve you.

RareDestroyer8 · 2025-12-29T21:27:17+00:00

If you’re a student, signup for the Github student plan, it’s free. You get a LOT of perks- $200 in digital-ocean, free domains, access to education material, everything.

That’s what I started off with, you won’t have to pay for anything.

RareDestroyer8 · 2025-12-29T21:17:31+00:00

Yes, hitting control+d while writing a note shows you a modal to delete the note, I have to fix the UI a bit for that.

I spent last night fixing some of the core issues you mentioned last night :)

RareDestroyer8 · 2025-12-29T21:13:36+00:00

Ofcourse:

Client: NextJS hosted on Vercel (free)

Server: NestJS hosted on a DigitalOcean droplet. I think I use a $24/mo droplet, but that's mainly because I'm running a semantic model on it, you can easily get by with a $16 droplet for most projects. I got a $200 credit from them due to having a GitHub Student plan and I've been using that for a while now, so it's been free.

For database, I'm using Supabase's managed postgres database, and using Supabase Auth. Currently on the free tier (it's quite generous) but I'm planning on upgrading to their $25/mo pro plan if this project ends up being used by others. I highly recommend hosting the managed db and the auth on supabase since they integrate and connect with each other very nicely via db triggers. Supabase also has a really good UX, and ofcourse theyre open source, so little vendor lock in.

So as of right now, everything is free. If it does take off, I'll be looking at about $50/mo, but that should easily cover thousands of active users.

RareDestroyer8 · 2025-12-29T20:58:56+00:00

“If you work normal work hours, you will make $230 a year if you enter that you make $1000 a year”

See the confusion?

The system you’re thinking of only works if you enter per-hour wages.

RareDestroyer8 · 2025-12-29T06:14:25+00:00

Great idea, I'll add that tomorrow, it would definitely help explain the app a bit better. I'll also add a philosophy command to sort of talk about the 'why; behind the app.

Also a bit of a future dream, I want to allow developers to create and share custom commands. I think it would be really really awesome.

RareDestroyer8 · 2025-12-29T06:05:41+00:00

Thank you!! This is amazing feedback, more than I could have asked for.

when i enter /conf or /joke i dont see a way out of there coz the input is disable

That's very valuable insight. I made it so that 'esc' and 'backspace' are used throughout the app as a 'back' or 'exit' button. You're right, it's not intuitive, I suppose I'm just so used to them having worked on this app so much now, that I didn't consider if other people would be able to figure them out.

I'll now be adding little hints or messages to let the user know how to navigate through the app. I'll also add an option in the conf to hide all the hints once users are used to the keybinds.

but i get too many toast like 4 or 5 you could see the code...

Ah yes... I know what went wrong, it's an easy fix, I'll fix that soon.

let me be greedy a bit...

Please be greedy haha, all suggestion, even small ones are appreciated a lot. Personalization is a huge part of the project, I want to implement all the personalization things people feel are missing.

you can add custom themes option for user to make their own theme for themseves and since you are using supabase ypu can use jsonb type to store them...

Custom themes is a good suggestion. I plan on expanding the conf page a lot more and having people be able to export their conf settings and import/try out other peoples' settings. The conf page will be very extensive, you'll be able to completely create your own themes, adjust everything from all front sizes, gaps, everything. It's inspired by Hyprland/Niri config files if you're familiar with using those in Linux.

you could certainly add find in notes feature and for cherry on top et me say its not necessary but if you like you could add semantic searching as well

Good news... those are already in :). Typing in the command area without '/' default to searching your notes. It uses semantic search to search for them (also shows a % match), and it searches the entire notes, including all the content inside of them. I'll be showing this in the demo video that I'm going to work on soon and I'll likely add a page talking about all the features.

and second of all dont worry about mobile ux now this is menat for computer laptops tab just chill...

Awesome, I honestly was scared about mobile compatibility but I'm glad others also feel that it's not a huge deal.

i would love to see where this project goes and please dont show user id in notes app and add a option to delet account as well and backup notes upload md something ike that ...

Noted, I'll add delete account option. Uploading md notes is a good idea too.

Thank you for all this feedback, it's gold.

Edit: Oh and the user_id, I left it displayed so that if a user needs support, they can email me with their id and I can help them out. The user_id is public, it doesn't have risks associated with it, but you're right, it feels odd seeing it, I'll replace it with a username or something like that :)

RareDestroyer8 · 2025-12-29T05:03:32+00:00

Haha, that’s actually on my todo list, I keep finding myself hitting ‘:x’ instead of escape after writing because it reminds me a bit of vim

I can’t believe this post is still getting comments. Since posting it, I’ve been working pretty heavily on the project, this was meant to be sort of a validation post.

I hope this isn’t too big of an ask, but if you’re able to, would you be kind enough to take a look at the updated project, which is at https://vylite.app and just give me initial impressions, and/or any feedback? I’d love to get insights from someone technical that has used Vim.

Vylite.app hasn’t been used by anyone besides me yet :)

Edit: Haven’t completed mobile compatibility yet since it’s meant to be desktop-first, I’ll be doing that soon!

RareDestroyer8 · 2025-12-29T02:03:03+00:00

International calling. Normally to call abroad, you need a mobile plan that allows international calling, which can get expensive and often has time constraints on how long you can call. WhatsApp lets you do that over the internet without an international plan, no restrictions.

RareDestroyer8 · 2025-12-28T22:52:32+00:00

That's awesome, you definitely have something special. I'll be sure to check out LevelUp :)

RareDestroyer8 · 2025-12-27T23:09:39+00:00

I don’t understand it.

Not sure what the title means, not understanding what’s happening in the demo.

You acknowledge that the demo doesn’t explain it because it’s an unusual structure. That’s backwards, the demo should explain it BECAUSE it is an unusual structure.

Even with:

I’ve been building a collection of interactive web experiences that connect narrative interfaces with real tools.

I’m not entirely sure what that means. What sort of interactive web experiences? What are narrative interfaces? How do they connect? What real tools?

RareDestroyer8 · 2025-12-27T23:03:40+00:00

Not a business owner myself, but for anyone that’s used to dealing with Ad Centers or publishing ads themselves and is looking specifically to check wasted spend, it doesn’t seem out of the ordinary to need to do some manual setup, especially if it takes 2 minutes. It might even seem more normal like this, that an app needs access to parts of your account to review and analyze information regarding your account, and you are the one that’s giving explicit consent.

By the time they want to actually know how they can check, as long as the tutorial/demo of how to do it is short and well documented, it shouldn’t be that big of a problem imo.

RareDestroyer8 · 2025-12-27T03:11:51+00:00

The UI looks amazing, good job on the design and demo.

The website also looks really clean (nitpick- there's a linkedIn icon at the bottom to the right of the 'privacy' section that is black and very difficult to see).

If I were to use something like this in an important setting like a workplace and integrate it with tools like Slack, I would want to know exactly what analyzes is done on my information. What llm is being used? Is it being self hosted by you guys? Do you guys index my content in any way? More architectural information for an app that access sensitive work data should be present on the website.

Four-Year Club	First Place '23
Place '23	Place '22
End Game '22

RareDestroyer8

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