ChatNotes

• Do you maintain your notes in markdown?
• Ever felt uneasy that all your chats with ChatGPT, Claude, and others are spread in several providers? Want to keep them in the same place, possibly in a Git repo?
• Want to integrate your note-taking with your LLM provider of choice?
• Want a CLI, Desktop, and mobile app?

If so, then this project is for you.

Welcome to ChatNotes, an AI-friendly multi-LLM markdown-based note-taking app. It's still new and scrappy, but usable.

Here's the sample config I've been using with my notes:

$ cat ~/Code/Notes/.chatnotes/config.toml
version = 1
secrets_provider = "keyring"
ignores = [ "**/.git", "**/.obsidian" ]

[storage]
notes_dir = "."
chats_dir = ".chatnotes/chats"

[provider]
default = "openai"

[providers.openai]
model = "gpt-5.5"
models = ["gpt-5.5", "gpt-4o-mini"]
api_key_name = "OPENAI_API_KEY"

Each workspace gets it own config file. Or one may have a global one in ~/.chatnotes/config.toml.

Needless to say, feel free to leave your thoughts and suggestions as GitHub issues.

What it does for people:

• Keeps chats and notes together in one place
• Stores chats as JSON and notes as Markdown so the data stays portable
• Lets you use multiple LLM providers instead of locking you into one
• Supports a terminal app and a desktop app
• Lets you write and browse notes while chats are open beside them
• Streams assistant responses into the active conversation
• Supports creating, renaming, deleting, and linking chats and notes
• Supports note continuation chats through /chat and the note Chat button
• Supports search across chats, notes, and workspace-relative paths
• Supports theme selection in the desktop app
• Supports a compact desktop sidebar that can collapse for focused reading

Roadmap

• Multiple providers; currently, only OpenAI is supported
• iOS app
• Syncing

Development

For setup, repository structure, configuration, commands, and development details, see DEVELOPMENT.md.

Screenshots

License

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE.