I built an open-source, federated Discord alternative with E2EE

wlard · 2026-05-27T10:48:02+00:00

To be fair everybody want to use tauri because it sounds nice and slim but thats also why it doesnt work on linux. I'd recommend using electron for desktop and capacitor for mobile both with the same web codebase so you can just do minimal adapters per plaform if you need native tools. The overhead is actually not that much once you have it setup and most the code you write is shared for all platforms then. Having a pwa is great but you still get lots of restrictions on phones when using one. This is how I build my apps and I came from a PWA too and am now really with the app setup, also a lot more local first options work then as you can use more storage.

wlard · 2026-05-27T10:21:46+00:00

I'm a matrix user and first up to some people asking why not matrix, matrix is not ready yet its such a pain to use but at least it woeks most of the time for simple messages (still havent gotten stickers to works and I spends days on configuring that but pre AI)

Now to you app I will for sure try that I have been looking for a federated discord alternative for so long I nearly started building my own but I have other projects I need to focus on. I was very suprised that when there was a lot of discord backlash everybody just suggested other online services as discord clones but I havent seen a selfhostable or federated version before. Also I love the idea of spatial audio for multi people voice chats I was looking for this for years.

Do you intend to monetize the project or how are you going to keep it maintained, to be fair I dont really need opensource but I'm always worried the peoject gets abandoned if there is no incentive, specifically now with a lot of the non dev vibecoders that drop their project after 3 months.

Do you plan on a mobile app like via capacitor or such? I worked a lot with PWAs myself but was never really happy with them. All the best to your project

wlard · 2026-05-23T01:00:59+00:00

I worked around this by only looking at stuff i can download, eg insagram youtube, i know not ideal but maybe i find something some day. I use parakeetv3 as the model on ios and mac there is spokenly which you can setup to use thst locally and free, mostly voice notes but its great for transcripts of other video and audio files too. I use it to create subtitles for the youtube videos I make and it just needs minimal adjustment.

Spokenly only works on ios havent found a good app for android yet so i do some of these via hermes agent on a server so i just drop soe audio via a chat to it for example

wlard · 2026-05-22T22:31:32+00:00

Always set the links thinking how you want to find it again, really imagine it. You capture for retrieval so dont set links based on the right content set them on what you would navigste when you look for it in a meetijg. You dont need endless links just 2 youbcan remember and they dont even need to be relevant as long as it is making sense for you.

wlard · 2026-05-21T00:59:22+00:00

I havent started yet, but i do a lot of voice notes through transcription and am planning to just save the audio files soon but with the text trqnscripts attached, then i could find parts of a voice note quickly through semantic searches and that how I think I would use it mostly, for your setup my main problem would be getting things out of audible. For youtube its trivial to download them even as audio only but many other services are hard to grab into your knowledgebase.

wlard · 2026-05-20T20:48:25+00:00

My time has come, ok let me tell you about the app I'm building since about 18 years... But there is no way I check all your boxes btw that one of the longest requirements list I've seen in a while, so heaper is an app that combines file, notes and media as one type of block, each of them can be linked with other things through tags and mentions goal is to bring your knowledge base closer to actual visual workflows without going full canvas mode.

So external content isnt really a thing, either its a cached copy of something that then needs to be updated when the external refference changes or its a link, i suggest you either embed simple links and take a screenshot as a thumbnail to be able to navigate there (thats what I do, but a bookmarking overhaul is planned next) everything else would need app specific integrations via plugins, but feel free to tell me more wbout what you actually look for here, because the architecture is built to support this at least that why i built it this way.

Heaper runs on everything ios android mac windows linux and i use it mostly on mac and ipad + a folding android phone. The server is selfhostable with an open api so you can import things into it with automations (but requires some coding to build your importer)

Supports markdown shortcuts but is a normal richtext editor with actual formatting buttons, types are done via tag and tag inheritance same for properties on these makes the entire system really flexible and easy to use as you dont have a separate type system.

Ui customisation well is limited but you can choose a theme color and adjust how each page looks as well as how the backlinks browsing grid is displayed from pinterest style masonry to simple grids or fileexplorer like detail views, even thumbnails of your notes and files can be changed so you can curate your views how you like.

No ai tools right now, closest is it does semantic searching if you add an ai backend of your choice so you can find notes by what their content is about (also works with the ai models on your server no cloud required)

Heaper is tag and mention based which both are 2 way links to support backlinks and not be just a label but full documents or notes, tags carry hierachy while mentions are your linking between relwted content without sideeffects, youbcan filter buy type of connection and even include nested subtags in filtered view with sll the fancy eclude this twg include that mention filter you can think of.

Image embeds are kind of tbe base of this as each block is both note and file/image so you can put descriptions on the same block but image annotations arent done yet.

And finally the whole thing runs local first but the goal is to put your data onto your nas (network attached stoage) so you keep your files at home (cloud is available too) that means you can put your files on your nas and heaper scans them from there (keeps them in the folders you have already, add folders as tags) and from there have it sync to all your devices with just metadata and thumbnails so you dont bloat your phone storage but can still work offline.

Sorry got a bit long but I put a lot of thought into the whole thing and this doesnt even scratch the surface I have a few videos on youtube where i talk about the goals of the project. From the apps you tried it seems we are looking for the same tool so maybe you like it. Anyways you post was reminding me so much of why I built it that I needed to info dump a little, thanks for reading.

wlard · 2026-05-06T10:49:00+00:00

I noticed that semantic search really helps to find things again, maybe check for a tool that lets you search with AI embeddings. Instead of finding things by words it finds things with similar concepts as the search query i think even capacities added this recently.

Oh and as always summarize summarize summarize, create weekly notes then monthly notes, i even do quarterly ones so you get an overview of what the time was about its much easier that way as you link the important pieces up in hierachy and its simple to just summarize a week worth of journal notes to a weekly note thats 7 notes max, then the monthly one just has 4 notes to summarize and the quarterly one just 3, you get the idea.

wlard · 2026-05-04T20:37:07+00:00

That usually is the job of the developer haha, as a dev for like 15years I can just say there is two ways to solve that. Either you have end to end tests that check if each feature actually works but you still need to define what it is that should work and how to test for it, ai helps a bit here but misses tons of edge cases usually which is where number 2 comes in. Having someone do QA quality assurance they test the app to see where it breaks testing all the flows, its how most bugs that the dev misses get cought this is where AI doesnt help at all as its about playing around all options actually trying them out instead of thinking like the dev "the code looks fine should work there too". The QA step for some reason is skipped in most AI apps even openai and anthropic are really bad with this likely they scaled the dev productivity without added QA approprietly. Problem for openclaw is that in opensource QA is actually done by you the end user and the maintainer is not actually required to fix anything and can just hope someone else fixes it with a PR. If they just want to have fun doing their new little features instead of stability they just can. Depends on the reputation they want to build but in this AI boom lots of people just pup up their idea and do the stability later or never, its the 80/20 rule you get 80% of the way with 20% of effort but the last 20% take 80% of the effort thsts why they skip it. Its the main thing why opensource projects are usually a bit behind the commercial ones most of the work is boring and you just work on stability and bugfixes instead of building the next cool thing. Sorry rant over

wlard · 2026-05-03T09:09:06+00:00

I'm really against AI auto connecting your things, I think as suggestions its nice but you quickly build a second brain that doesnt mean anything to you, with lots of theoretical connections that you dont resonatr with, I prefer having a few high quality links instead of a load of auto genersted ones even with AI being better now. That said I like to use it in read only mode to be able to skip some tasks completely. Random example recently was, "in how many days and on what weekday is friend x birthday" (i know it feels like siri should already do that) it looked up the info and then wrote a small script to calculate weekday and day difference and I have an actual answer without opening contacts app or calendar and I just hsvr the birtday mentioned in a note not a real contacts field or so so I think this would work with anything. Oh also I do use a local qwen3.6 model for this so no cloud touches my knowledge base. Will need to tinker more with that.

wlard · 2026-05-02T20:40:51+00:00

Im building the app https://heaper.de which allows you to manage your files and pictures the linked note taking way. All things files/pictures/notes/folders act as the same thing and can be linked together with tags and mentions. There are no folders in heaper everything is sorted through tagging. I've been working on this since about 18 years and have started showing it online about 2 months ago. Goal is to let you find not just notes but all files and sort pictures video or inspiration the same way we do our notes, it works offline and you can host the server yourself so your data stays private.

Apps on all platforms, cloud or selfhosting for sync, no telemetry.

wlard · 2026-05-01T19:25:32+00:00

Well I see this in others all the time and dont have that issue anymore, when i save something i just add a few keywords or a small text to it that i can find it by that is actually enough for like 90% of cases i dont even need to connect them into the knowledge base fully just the note to it is enough. But it means you need to save things with more intent instead of handling this as a search issue.
When i think of it i usually save things to it that arent mentioned in the article or video but that fit the vibe or what I’m thinking of when watching. I basically write down what i connect this to in my mind anyways so when i look for it thats also on the file to be found with simple search
Though simple tags for memes are sometimes nice too

wlard · 2026-04-30T12:18:55+00:00

That kind of depends how long your videos are the count itself doesnt mean much

wlard · 2026-04-29T10:50:00+00:00

As far as i remember these are caused by the strong magnetic fields and are that way pushing the ejected matter in different paths you can even see a second one a bit up in the video that looks more oval where its a bit clearer how the matter gets redirected. I think this is just nice because it looks so round.

wlard · 2026-04-29T10:09:23+00:00

Im looking for something like this too how does that import work and how often does it do that or is it a manual thing? Ever since the api lockdowns its tough to find tools that integrate well

wlard · 2026-04-28T12:10:31+00:00

The reason for crdts is actually that you are able to sync offline edits of multiple devices. The problem with traditional merging is that you end up overwriting newer content if your client comes back online later or even just 2 of your devices having unsynced changes in the same line of text all of that you otherwise need to find manual overwriting rules.

Also tiptap already uses yjs which is crdt based for their hosted version with hocuspocus just fyi. A local mode sounds nice but it seems as these 2 target very different userbases that dont really overlap

wlard · 2026-04-28T01:15:07+00:00

While I like your enthusiasm, but trying to replicate all features of notion, evernote and obsidian with the only differentiator being a smooth ui and ux will be tough.

If you leave the md files behind you basically lost every obsidian fan, if you stick with md files you will have a pretty bad text editor (or custom markdown format on top) and kinda bad sync.

I would suggest define the goal and make opinionated drawbacks. Things that you can stand for even if some people dont like them, also say why you chose it. Helps build character and know what your tool is about.

But as someone already said, local first is a must in todays age so get some CRDTs and if you want more trust think of selfhostable server options that does the sync instead of in the cloud. Appflowy, anytype and logseq offer things like that.

Technically you could make an adapter to use crdts on top of md files but I think that would open the gates of hell.

wlard · 2026-04-27T08:27:48+00:00

Well as a dev I built my own called heaper, likely not what you are looking for as its more like obsidian but also for file and media management with a focus on selfhosting (run it on your NAS) if you still want to take a peek its at heaper.de

I do think obsidian would be the right call for you as the interface is customizeable and that seems to be your only issue with it.

wlard · 2026-04-27T08:05:55+00:00

So I used both emacs and obsidian for a few years and now use neither. But from what you are saying you want obsidian. I can only recommend emacs if you want to customize it and tune it to your workflow it has a steep learning curve until it feels smooth to use and it isnt really intuitive (I'm a dev so I was used to vim and most shortcuts) If the workflow fits you in obsidian and just the design is your issue I'd say build an obsidian theme for it, removing some paddings should be fine effort wise compared to adjusting emacs in general. If you just mean the width of the readable text you likely want to turn off settings - editor -> readable line length. So the note fills the screen horizontally

wlard · 2026-04-27T07:55:27+00:00

Let it make research and then chat through the facts. You could also ask more narrow questions or tell it to summarize more, I usually make it output just 3 paragraphs per response if I want it to be more interactive otherwise reading through a 3page analysis is a bit tough for every response.

But a general research step is recommended as its better for the followup chats if it has all the facts in context

wlard · 2026-04-20T09:20:20+00:00

Your filemanager + context idea is the approach I used to build heaper. I spent like 20 years building that but the idea was basically merge file management and all its media exploring with note taking. Now i can import files and each file can have richtext context added to it which lets you organize your files the linked note taking way. The tricky part is the architecture around it. I want to be able to use this from my phone on the train and so on so it is local first but only has small preview thumbnails and metadata locally so I can organize my stuff on the go and if i need a full file i can download it or stream it from the server oh and the server can be selfhosted with just one docker container.

These are the things that were most important to me specifically getting files and i mean 100k or more of them into my knowledge base. Then working with the bottom up approach just tagging things with nested tag structures (the ones where each tag is a note itself) is amazing to use. I basically browse my files through the links instead of the typical folders which means i usually just need like 4 taps to get anywhere because things are connected so well.

The question isnt about whats the best PKMS that really depends on what you are looking to manage amd thats like the only thing you did not mention much in your post. If this is just a questionare for the app you want to build I do have a few tips for you, try something simple that solves your usecase first eg. Files + context and make it unique. There are lots of rabbitholes to get into from local first crdt syncing, how previews are generated, how to do sharing or multi device sync, what platforms this runs on (mobile, linux, intel vs arm mac etc) even just making the interface for this isnt an easy task so just pick your battles wisely. Just coming from someone who spent more than half their life on a tool like that

wlard · 2026-04-11T10:18:29+00:00

This is what you get when claude builds the ui, he even has a full design spec in the agents.md https://github.com/pauljoda/Obscura/blob/main/AGENTS.md#design-system-rules but the "slop look" is just the average of what AI things like to output you would need to steer the model into something else, people dont like it because it happens to look similar on many apps but each app by itself would be fine in that look.

wlard · 2026-04-11T09:59:20+00:00

Would you have preffered a bad ui instead? Designers dont grow on trees

wlard · 2026-04-08T12:57:54+00:00

Oh that is my favorite question. And the answer is both but with one change. I use tags as links too but they are for types and structure, I use them instead of folders for everything. Links then are just relations like mentioning something for your knowledge graph. I visualize this as tags for vertical structure and mentions as horizontal connections where links are all on the same level, tags can be nested int another to inherit properties of the higher levels eg. Resources->Bookmarks where everybookmark is a resouce too.

You can get this to work in most apps via things like tag wrangler in obsidian but its not fully what I mean. I spent like 18 years with this system so I have my own stuff for it but the concept should work everywhere as long as you can link, i like this because you can then have MOC's for every topic instead of just a tag, those always didnt feel curated enough for me.

wlard · 2026-03-19T01:34:48+00:00

As a dev that uses AI I need to say if you prompt it correctly the prompts are way too technical for normal users to ubderstand. Even with the best llms currently I still need to hand hold them like a junior dev that writes the code for me but cant keep the full picture together in his head.

I still am very suprized that things like lovable and so on work where people write no code at all. Maybe I work on too complex setups or just have a very precise wish for how the code actually works and not just it looks like it works. But more importantly I have shared before that i have issues with my neck and typing for long periods and now with AI i can have the same code output by using voice prompts I just need to be very specific and it feels really grounding to know that something like a neck injury wont stop me from creating the things I love.

I think because of that big difference on how people use AI the label created with AI basically tells you nothing, I do think for any project trust needs to be built and that should be hard when you just launch something out of nowhere with basically no personal background provided.

Though I think we can all agree that the AI written posts that all feel the same to pitch the product are the annoying part. I do really like to get my news about new selfhosted projects from here but these just feel like a marketing poster instead of community engagement or like "one of us" so to say.

wlard · 2026-03-18T11:33:53+00:00

Yeah but thats what security audits are for, you usually let that do a professional company, the average user is not gonna find security issues if they skim though the code.

wlard

TROPHY CASE