A fast, beautiful markdown note-taking app for personal knowledge management. Built with Tauri, React, and CodeMirror.

Features • Screenshots • Installation • Development • License

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Features

Editor

• Live Preview, Source, and Reading view modes
• CodeMirror 6 with syntax highlighting, code folding, and bracket matching
• Wiki-links ([[note]]) with autocomplete, backlink tracking, and heading links
• Slash commands — type / to open an inline command menu (headings, code blocks, callouts, tables, and more)
• YAML frontmatter properties editor with type indicators
• Inline image preview with resize and alignment controls
• Math (LaTeX) block preview
• Mermaid diagram rendering
• Callout blocks (> [!NOTE], > [!WARNING], etc.)
• Table editor with column/row manipulation
• Tags with autocomplete, nested tag support, and tag panel
• Highlight syntax (==highlighted==)
• Find and replace across notes (Ctrl+Shift+F)
• Spellcheck with custom dictionary support
• Vim mode (optional)
• Smart lists (auto-continue bullets, tasks, numbered lists)
• Indent guides with customizable style and color
• Code block line numbers
• Embed preview for transclusion (![[note]])
• Query/Dataview-like preview blocks

Real-Time Collaboration

• Live collaborative editing for shared folder vaults — multiple users edit simultaneously
• Live cursors and selections with user colors
• Collaborators sidebar panel showing who's editing what
• File tree presence dots showing active collaborators per file
• Auto host election with presence file discovery — zero config, just open the same vault
• Password-protected sessions (never saved to disk)
• Automatic host promotion on disconnect
• Collab-aware file operations — rename/delete events sync across all users
• Settings profiles for per-user preferences when sharing a vault

Focus & Writing

• Focus mode with paragraph dimming
• Typewriter mode (keeps current line centered)
• Word count goals with progress tracking
• Auto-save with timer and focus-change modes
• Split panes for side-by-side editing
• Status bar (word count, character count, reading time, selection info)

Canvas Whiteboard

• Infinite canvas for visual thinking with pan, zoom, and snap-to-grid
• Text, file, and link cards with markdown rendering
• Connect cards with edges (arrows, labels, colors, line styles)
• Group nodes for organizing related cards
• Auto-layout (grid, tree, force-directed), alignment, and distribution
• Canvas search, minimap, and export to PNG or SVG
• Undo/redo, copy/paste, duplicate, lock/unlock nodes
• .canvas file format compatible with Obsidian

Knowledge Management

• Backlinks panel showing all notes that link to the current note
• Tag index with tag panel for browsing and renaming
• Graph view visualizing connections between notes
• Bookmarks for quick access to frequently used notes
• Outline panel for heading navigation
• Table of contents generation
• Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly notes with templates

Organization

• Vault-based file management with folder tree
• Quick Open (Ctrl+O) for fast file switching
• Command Palette (Ctrl+P) with 40+ commands and keyboard shortcuts
• Drag-and-drop file reorganization
• File properties dialog (word count, character count, backlinks, tags)
• Template system for creating notes from templates
• Variable replacement system with custom delimiters
• Folder colors with multiple display styles
• GitHub sync for vault backup and collaboration

Import & Export

• Import from Obsidian, Notion, Bear, Roam Research, and plain markdown
• Export to Markdown, HTML, or PDF
• Batch export with customizable options

Customization

• 21+ built-in themes: Catppuccin (Mocha, Macchiato, Frappe, Latte), Nord, Dracula, Gruvbox, Tokyo Night, One Dark, Solarized, Rosé Pine, GitHub, Monokai, Material, Night Owl, Ayu, Kanagawa, Everforest
• Custom theme support via JSON with visual card picker
• Configurable fonts (UI and editor), font sizes, and line height
• Plugin system with sandboxed iframe execution and marketplace
• 30+ configurable feature toggles with per-feature option pages
• Customizable keyboard shortcuts
• Internationalization ready (i18next, 2200+ keys)

Performance & Security

• Native desktop app — no Electron, no browser overhead
• Rust backend for file I/O with canonical path validation and traversal protection
• Collaboration server binds to localhost with Argon2 password hashing
• Plugin HTML sandboxed with restrictive CSP; asset protocol scoped to user documents
• CI pipeline with SHA-pinned actions, cargo clippy, and npm audit
• Files stay on your disk, no cloud dependency
• Lazy-loaded components and namespaced i18n bundles
• Deep link support (cascade://open/vault/note)

Screenshots

Canvas Whiteboard

Graph View

Backlinks Panel

Vault Search

Quick Open

Find & Replace

Command Palette

Settings — Appearance

Settings — Features

Settings — Editor

Settings — Keyboard Shortcuts

Welcome View

Installation

Pre-built Binaries

Download the latest release for your platform from the Releases page.

Platform	Download
Windows	.msi installer
macOS	.dmg disk image
Linux	.AppImage / .deb

Build from Source

Prerequisites:

• Node.js 18+
• Rust 1.70+
• Tauri CLI

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/Real-Fruit-Snacks/Cascade.git
cd cascade

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Run in development mode
npm run tauri dev

# Build for production
npm run tauri build

Development

Project Structure

cascade/
├── src/                  # React frontend
│   ├── components/       # UI components
│   ├── stores/           # Zustand state stores
│   ├── hooks/            # Custom React hooks
│   ├── i18n/             # Internationalization config
│   ├── locales/en/       # English translation files
│   ├── editor/           # CodeMirror extensions
│   ├── lib/              # Utility functions
│   └── plugin-api/       # Plugin sandbox system
├── src-tauri/            # Rust backend
│   └── src/
│       ├── main.rs       # Tauri entry point
│       ├── commands.rs   # IPC command handlers
│       └── error.rs      # Error types
├── tests/e2e/            # Playwright E2E tests
└── docs/                 # Documentation

Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Runtime	Tauri v2 (Rust + WebView)
Frontend	React 19 + TypeScript
Editor	CodeMirror 6
Styling	Tailwind CSS
State	Zustand 5
i18n	react-i18next
Themes	Catppuccin + 17 more
Testing	Vitest, Playwright

Running Tests

# Run unit tests
npm test

# Start the app first
npm run tauri dev

# Run E2E tests (requires app to be running)
npx playwright test

Commands

Command	Description
npm run dev	Start Vite dev server
npm run build	TypeScript check + Vite build
npm run lint	ESLint check
npm run tauri dev	Start Tauri app in dev mode
npm run tauri build	Build production binaries

Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+O	Quick Open
Ctrl+P	Command Palette
Ctrl+N	New File
Ctrl+S	Save
Ctrl+W	Close Tab
Ctrl+Tab	Next Tab
Ctrl+Shift+F	Search in Vault
Ctrl+,	Settings
Ctrl+B	Toggle Sidebar
Ctrl+F	Find in File
Ctrl+H	Find and Replace
Ctrl+Shift+C	New Canvas
Alt+D	Open Daily Note
Ctrl+Z	Undo
Ctrl+Shift+Z	Redo

License

MIT