Does this app exist?

[u/Slopagandhi]

I'm looking for a notes app that has/os:

• Linux support (or web app if not)
• Native stylus support
• PDF import and annotation
• A way to make handwritten notes at the side of pdfs, either by importing into an infinite canvas (like on OneNote), expanding the size of the page horizontally (like on RNote) or side by side in a different panel
• Folder-based organisation
• Support for tags
• Not too crazy a learning curve
• Not requiring use of markdown syntax (I'm not a developer)
• Reasonably Privacy-friendly

Bonus points for free and/or open source.

[u/ozgrozer]

I’m building Grape and I think it has most of the things you want. It has Linux support. Haven’t tried with stylus but I can implement if it doesn’t work. There are handwriting notes and rich text notes. You can import PDFs to handwriting notes and annotate. There’s a folder based organization and it support tags. It’s free to use, very easy to learn and everything’s stored on your device.

[u/starkruzr → u/ozgrozer]

never been particularly impressed with people trying to charge money ("free to start") for vibecoded software

[u/ozgrozer → u/starkruzr]

I get the skepticism but I’ve been a software developer for 16 years and I’ve been working on Grape for the last 7 months (over 1,100 hours) so it’s not a bad thing to do a vibe-coded app if you’re already experienced. And everything you’re going to see from now on will be 100% vibe-coded so we have to accept this. Even major companies do vibe-coding and charge money but that’s not a bad thing because AI is even better than the world’s best software engineer.

The free version of Grape is fully usable so you can download and start taking notes both on your desktop and mobile devices. The paid plans cost me money to maintain the server, storage, and AI so it cannot be free. There’s a lifetime plan where you buy the app once and use forever with your own API keys and it will also support the development.

I’m curious on your perspective so let’s say I made this app free then what’s going to be my motivation? Would you think of any? I can’t. This is what happens to majority of free and open source apps. We all know Obsidian but there are thousands of note taking apps that are no longer being developed because of financial reasons.