Railnote

Markdown notes that work the moment you open them

A free, open-source alternative to Obsidian. It opens your vault as is, answers questions from your notes through the coding agent you already have, and tells you where each new note belongs.

Download RailnoteVersion 0.1.4 for Mac, Windows and Linux. MIT licensed, no account.

Keeps the folder of files, fixes the rest

The part of Obsidian people love is that your notes are plain files you own. The parts they complain about are the setup, the plugin hunt, not knowing where a note goes, and having no good way to ask their own notes a question.

  1. Opens your Obsidian vault as is

    Point it at the folder. Wikilinks, aliases, embeds, frontmatter and #tags all work, and nothing is imported or converted. Your notes stay plain .md files, and edits made by other apps or agents show up live. Starting fresh? One click makes a vault with an inbox, daily notes and templates.

  2. Ask your notes

    Press ⌘J and ask, say, “what did we decide about pricing, and why?” The answer links the notes it came from. Ask runs through the coding agent you already use (Claude Code, Codex or OpenCode) in your vault, on your own plan. There's no API key to paste and no extra bill. Tick “Can edit notes” and it writes and changes notes too, with an undo for each one.

  3. Organize files the inbox

    New notes land in Inbox/, so you never have to decide where a thought goes while you're having it. Later, one click asks your agent for a folder, tags and related notes, and you tick the ones to apply.

  4. Built in, no plugin hunt

    Daily notes, a tasks view that collects every - [ ] in the vault, templates, search, backlinks, an outline and a version history for every note. The graph is a transit map: each folder is a line and each note a station, so you can read it.

  5. Sync, end-to-end encrypted, or through GitHub

    Optional. Each device encrypts every file and its name with your passphrase before it leaves, so the server only stores blobs it can't read. Use the free server or run your own (plain Node, no dependencies). Your phone opens the vault in its browser and works offline. Between computers, you can sync through a private GitHub repository instead, with the git login you already have.

Download

Version 0.1.4. Every release, with notes, is on GitHub.

Mac

macOS 13 or later. Open the .dmg and drag Railnote into Applications.

Windows

Windows 10 or later, x64. Installs for your user and updates itself.

Linux

The AppImage runs on most distributions (chmod +x it first). The .deb adds a menu entry and a railnote command.

Questions

Is it really free?
Yes. Railnote is MIT licensed, has no account and no paid tier, and the whole source is on GitHub. Ask and Organize use the agent subscription you already pay for.
Do my notes leave my computer?
Only when you use them. Ask and Organize send the question and the notes your agent reads to that agent's provider, the same as when you use the agent yourself. Sync is off until you turn it on. Server sync encrypts everything first; GitHub sync stores plain files in your own repository, so keep it private.
I don't use a coding agent. Can I still use it?
Yes. Everything except Ask and Organize works without one. To get those, install Claude Code, Codex or OpenCode and sign in; Railnote finds it on its own. On a phone, Ask and Organize use an API key instead.
Will it break my Obsidian vault?
No. Railnote reads and writes the same Markdown files and leaves the .obsidian folder alone, so you can open the vault in both. Renames rewrite links across the vault, and deletes go to .trash.
How finished is it?
It's version 0.1.4, so expect rough edges, and tell us what breaks. The Windows installer isn't signed yet, so Windows warns you once: choose More info, then Run anyway. Mac and Windows update themselves; on Linux, download new releases yourself.