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Notes from building Margin on weekends: what broke, what I decided not to build, and why the files stay plain. Long-form, occasional, no newsletter.
Bear keeps Markdown in one SQLite database. Margin keeps each note as a .md file in a folder, so it has folders and Bear doesn't. Where each is better, and how to move.
Bear shipped a CLI, a Claude connector and an MCP server so agents can reach its notes. A folder of Markdown files needs none of that. What an agent gets from the folder, and what breaks when it edits it.
I assumed Markdown would be the easy part of building a notes app. Pipes, round-tripping, paste and the cursor each ate a weekend.
Unmatched embeds, tables that refuse to be repaired, and display options with nowhere to live. Sometimes declining to parse is the safer failure.
Some editors save by replacing the whole file, so a file watcher briefly sees a deletion. Believe that event and your app tells someone their note is gone.
Notes from the workshop rather than wisdom from the mountain. What a few months of building a notes app has changed about how I look at every app I use.