catcher

A minimal note-taking app for the terminal. Local-first, no accounts, no sync: your notes are a folder of .md files in ~/catcher, so grep, git and Obsidian work on them too.

Background: Sanford Robinson Gifford, A Gorge in the Mountains (Kauterskill Clove), 1862. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, public domain.

Called tinynote until 0.9. Existing ~/tinynote and ~/.config/tinynote folders are still picked up.

Install

brew install gautham-v/tap/catcher

or cargo install catcher. Then run catcher.

Using it

• ^K is the command palette: new, open, delete, rename, move to folder, reading view, find in note, bookmark, open vault, help, settings, quit.
• ^O opens a note: every folder, most recently opened first, fuzzy-searched by filename. Tab steps through its tabs: recent, a folder tree, contents, tags and bookmarks.
• ⇧^F searches in all files: every line that has every word you type, grouped by note. ⏎ opens the note at that line. Obsidian's operators work: "a phrase", /regex/, -not, path:journal, file:plan, tag:work, line:(a b).
• Find in note in the palette (unbound, key_find) is find and replace within the open note: ⏎ steps forward, ⇧⏎ back, Tab moves to the replace field, where ⏎ replaces the match and ⌥⏎ replaces all.
• ⌥⏎ on a row in ^O or ⇧^F opens that note in a terminal split to the right and leaves this one where it is; ⌥⇧⏎ splits below, ⌘⏎ opens a tab, and ⌥click does the same as ⌥⏎. The palette has open in split right / down / new tab for the note you are in. Catcher asks the terminal: Ghostty 1.3+ (through AppleScript; macOS asks once whether catcher may control it), tmux, kitty and WezTerm. Elsewhere the status bar says so.
• ^N makes a note. The filename follows its first line until you rename the file yourself. Either way, [[links]] to the old name in other notes are rewritten to the new one.
• ⌥D opens today's note, journal/2026-09-01.md, made from journal/template.md the first time ({{title}}, {{date}}, {{date:FMT}}, {{time}}, {{yesterday}}, {{tomorrow}}) and never rewritten after. daily_format names the file with Obsidian's tokens (YYYY, MM, DD, MMMM, ddd, Do, HH, mm, A, [literal]); a / in it is a subfolder.
• Typing [[ suggests notes, [[note# its headings, [[^ this note's paragraphs and list items and [[note#^ another's (a block without an id gets one written onto it, Obsidian's way), and # the vault's tags; ⏎ or Tab takes one, Esc dismisses. autocomplete: no turns it off.
• The palette also has editing commands, unbound until you give them a key: toggle checkbox (- item → - [ ] → - [x] → - item, numbered lists too), move line up / down, toggle heading (#, ##, ###, none), insert today's date, copy path, reveal in Finder. Each takes the selection when there is one, and undoes as one step.
• ^P flips between the live-preview editor and the rendered page. Images draw inline in Ghostty, kitty and iTerm2, whether written ![alt](path) or as an Obsidian embed, ![[path]], ![[path|alt]] or ![[path|300]] for a width in pixels. A picture or attachment is looked for beside the note, in its attachments folder, in attachments_dir, then anywhere in the vault by name; a vault's .obsidian/app.json sets the attachments folder when the settings do not. In the reading view a click on a picture takes the whole terminal with it; ← / → step between the note's pictures, and any other key or a click puts the page back.
• [[wikilinks]] work like Obsidian's. ⌥⏎ follows one, ⌥P peeks at it, ^B / ^F go back and forward. A link to a note that does not exist yet is grey; following it makes the note beside the one you are in. [[Note#Heading]] reads as Note › Heading and lands on that heading; [[Note#^id]] lands on the line ending in ^id; [[#Heading]] jumps within the note. [text](note.md) links open, count and get rewritten the same way. Renaming a heading fixes the [[Note#Heading]] links to it. [[report.pdf]] opens the file with the desktop. Links resolve through a note's front matter aliases: (or alias:) too. The reading view lists the notes that link here at the bottom, and the notes that mention this one's title without linking it.
• ![[Note]], ![[Note#Heading]], ![[Note#^id]] or ![[Note|label]] on a line of its own embeds the note: a card with its title, the first lines of its body or of that section, and how many more there are. In a sentence it is a link.
• #tags are coloured, inline or as front matter tags: (or tag:). ⌥⏎ or a click on one opens ^O cut to the notes that carry it; #work lists the #work/projects notes too. Tags in the palette (key_tags) lists every tag in the vault with its note count.
• Unresolved links in the palette lists every [[link]] to a note that is not there; ⏎ goes to it. Bookmark note keeps the note in the bookmarks tab of ^O (seeded from the vault's .obsidian/bookmarks.json). Open vault… switches to another folder for the session.
• A ```mermaid fence is drawn as text: flowcharts and sequence diagrams, in box-drawing characters, no images and no network. Other kinds keep their source under a label.
• Callouts, front matter, tables wider than the page (they pan sideways), checkboxes and ==highlights== all render. Callouts fold (> [!kind]- Title starts folded, ⌥← / ⌥→ or a click toggles) and nest. The reading view draws front matter as a properties box, tags clickable and dates with a relative hint; a click on the box's edge folds it to one line and a click on the line opens it again. Toggle properties in the palette cycles box, line and hidden, and Hide properties goes straight to hidden (properties: box · line · hide in the settings); in the editor they flip front_matter between dim and hide.
• Tasks: 1. [ ] numbered tasks get a checkbox, and the [/] in progress, [-] cancelled, [>] forwarded and [?] question states draw as glyphs. Nested bullets alternate •, ◦, ▪.
• Also rendered, both views: %% comments %% (dimmed in the editor, gone from the page), inline footnotes ^[text] numbered with [^n] references, and the HTML notes actually use — <kbd>, <sub>, <sup>, <u>, <mark>, <br>, <!-- comments -->. The editor shows backslash escapes literally, a dim ↵ for a hard line break, setext headings and indented code.
• Outline in the palette (rebindable as key_outline) lists the note's headings: type to filter, ⏎ jumps, ⌥⏎ folds the section.
• Sections fold. On a heading, ⌥← folds everything under it down to the next heading of the same or a higher level, ⌥→ opens it again; a folded heading shows ▸ and how many lines it hides. Folds are per note and last for the session, and the reading view keeps them: a click on a heading there folds or unfolds it, and ⌥← / ⌥→ take the heading the selection is on, or the first one on screen.
• On start the note decodes out of noise for half a second; any key cuts it short. Toggle opener in the palette turns it off and on (opener: yes · no).
• Notes autosave. Edit a note in another program and catcher takes what is on disk: the buffer reloads, the cursor stays on its line, and ^Z brings the old buffer back. A file deleted from under it is said so in the status bar and recreated on the next save.
• Mouse works: click, drag to select and copy, scroll. ^V pastes a clipboard image as a PNG.

CLI

catcher                  open the note you last had open
catcher groceries        open the note whose title best matches; an error if none does
catcher new groceries    create a note titled "groceries" and open it
catcher today            open today's note in `journal/`, creating it from the template
catcher add "buy milk"   write a new note and print its path
catcher ~/vault          open the TUI rooted at that folder
catcher ~/vault/a.md     open that note, rooted at its folder
catcher path             print the notes directory
catcher --version        print the version

Keys

Editing is macOS-style: ⌘←/⌘→ line ends, ⌥←/⌥→ by word, ⇧ to extend a selection, ⌘A select all. Every key is rebindable in the settings; ^K answers to ctrl or cmd. ⇧^F needs a terminal that tells shift+ctrl apart (Ghostty, kitty, WezTerm); elsewhere it arrives as ^F and the palette is the way in. The editing commands ship with no key: key_checkbox, key_line_up, key_line_down, key_heading, key_date, key_copy_path, key_reveal, key_outline, key_tags, key_find, key_properties, key_hide_properties, key_opener bind them, and key_split_right, key_split_down, key_new_tab the open-beside ones.

Settings

^, opens ~/.config/catcher/settings.md as a note; ^S applies it. It covers the notes and attachments folders, the daily note's folder, file name format and template, theme (auto, dark, light) and colours, page width, borders, status bar (status_words adds a word and character count), the start-up animation (opener), autosave delay, tab width, front matter, table style, wikilinks, whether a rename updates links, linked mentions, autocomplete, how far ^O looks, and every key binding (key_fold, key_unfold, and the unbound key_fold_all / key_unfold_all among them). Each line has a one-line hint beside it. CATCHER_DIR overrides the notes folder.

Development

cargo run      # against ~/catcher (set CATCHER_DIR to test elsewhere)
cargo test
cargo clippy

Rust, ratatui + crossterm. src/editor.rs is the buffer, src/app.rs the app state and key/mouse handling (with table editing in src/app/table_edit.rs and link peeks in src/app/peek.rs), src/md.rs live-preview styling, src/render.rs the reading view, src/mermaid/ the diagram renderer, src/config.rs the settings note. Every colour lives in the theme module at the top of src/md.rs.

License

MIT