✦ Papyrus

A quiet place for every thought.

Local-first Markdown notes that stay private, portable, and yours. Runs everywhere. Syncs end-to-end encrypted. Never waits on the network.

_{Yes, that screenshot is a note in Papyrus, about marketing Papyrus, written in Papyrus — and the theme swatches are an image pasted into that note. We're aware. It's fine.}

---

The pitch (which the app also wrote about itself)

Most notes apps want to become your operating system. Papyrus just wants to hold your thoughts and then get out of the way.

It's a paper-first Markdown notebook. You type ## Heading or - [ ] Task and it quietly becomes one — no toolbars to hunt, no blocks to summon. Every note is canonical Markdown living in a local SQLite database on your own device, so editing is instant, search is instant, and nothing you write is ever hostage to a spinner.

When you want your notes on another device, sync is end-to-end encrypted and pairs with a QR code. The relay that shuttles your data between devices is deliberately, structurally clueless — it sees ciphertext and routing IDs and nothing else. Not your note titles. Not your folder names. Not a thing.

"A quiet place for every thought." — the empty state, being completely sincere

---

✦ What's in the box

• 📝 Paper-first editor — WYSIWYG feel, canonical Markdown underneath. Right-click for headings, lists, checklists, links, code, and images. There's a raw-source CodeMirror escape hatch for when you want to see the machinery.
• ☑️ Checklists that actually behave — - [ ] toggles, continues on Enter, and the caret lands exactly where you'd expect. (This sounds trivial. It was not trivial.)
• ⚡ Markdown shortcuts — ## , - , 1. , - [ ] auto-promote as you type.
• 🗂️ Folders that make sense — expandable tree, drag-and-drop notes between folders, reorder, rename, per-folder counts.
• 🔍 Instant full-text search — SQLite FTS, recency sorting, ⌘K to jump, ⌘N for a fresh page.
• 🖼️ Inline images — PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP up to 4 MB, embedded as portable data URLs. Your Markdown stays a single self-contained file.
• 📦 Whole-notebook export — one ZIP, organized by folder, readable Markdown with YAML metadata. Your notes can always walk out the front door.
• 🗑️ 30-day Trash — restore, permanent delete, or empty. Mistakes get a grace period.
• 🎨 7 themes, 3 fonts — Papyrus (warm parchment with real paper-fiber grain), Mist, Graphite, Nord, Solarized, Dracula, Gruvbox.
• 🔐 End-to-end encrypted sync — QR pairing, immutable revisions, conflict review that never overwrites (Keep Current / Keep Other / Keep Both), device revocation.
• 📴 Offline-first, always — autosave, background sync every couple minutes and on focus, but editing never once waits for a network round-trip.
• 📱 Genuinely cross-platform — macOS, Windows, Linux, native iOS and Android, plus the web at notes.c0di.com.

---

🔒 Your notes, your keys, nobody else's business

Papyrus is local-first by conviction, not marketing.

• Every device keeps a complete SQLite copy of your notebook. The app is fully functional with the Wi-Fi off.
• Notes are encrypted on-device with XChaCha20-Poly1305, signed with Ed25519, before anything touches the wire.
• Pairing a new device does an X25519 key exchange seeded by the QR secret, runs it through HKDF-SHA256, and hands the vault key straight from device to device. The relay is never in the loop.
• Private keys live in your OS keychain; secrets are zeroized in memory after use.
• The sync relay is a Cloudflare Worker that stores only opaque IDs, ciphertext, acknowledgements, and expiry times. It is a very well-paid mail carrier that cannot read the mail.

Even if you never turn sync on, Markdown export is always there. Papyrus is designed to be leaveable — which, paradoxically, is why you'll stay.

---

🛠️ Built with

Layer	Tech
Shell	Tauri 2 (Rust + system webview) — desktop and mobile
Frontend	React 19 · TypeScript · Vite 6
Editors	Custom paper WYSIWYG · CodeMirror 6 · markdown-it
Storage	SQLite (bundled, via rusqlite) with FTS
Crypto	XChaCha20-Poly1305 · Ed25519 · X25519 · HKDF-SHA256
Sync relay	Cloudflare Workers + D1 + R2
Web	Static React build on Cloudflare → notes.c0di.com

---

🚀 Run it

npm install
npm run tauri dev

For local sync development, start the relay in another terminal:

cd relay
npm install
npx wrangler d1 migrations apply papyrus-sync-relay --local
npm run dev

Package a native macOS app:

npx tauri build --bundles app
# → src-tauri/target/release/bundle/macos/Papyrus.app

Deploy the web app and sync relay (after authenticating with Cloudflare):

npx wrangler login
npm run deploy          # web app → notes.c0di.com
npm run deploy:relay    # applies D1 migrations, then deploys the relay
npm run deploy:all      # relay, then web app

See relay/README.md for failure simulation, testing, and deployment of the sync relay.

---

Papyrus — write it down, keep it yours.

_{This README was drafted in a notes app, about a notes app, and the last checkbox on its to-do list is still unchecked until you clone it.}