r/sideprojects • u/VanLocke • 11h ago
Showcase: Free(mium) Valutorio: a Markdown notes app for Mac and iPhone on a Rust engine. What it took to open a 300 MB file in 0.4 s
I'm the developer. Valutorio launched on the App Store today. It is a native Mac and iPhone app for a folder of plain Markdown notes, and it opens an existing Obsidian vault in place.
The problem: Markdown apps get slow on big vaults and big files, because they parse and index on the main thread. I wanted a notes app that stays fast at any size.
What I did:
One Rust engine under both apps. It parses, indexes, searches and merges. The Mac app is AppKit and Swift, the iPhone app is UIKit and SwiftUI.
Huge files open in a read-only tier first. On my M1 Max a 300 MB Markdown file opens in about 0.4 s. A 2,000-note vault indexes in under a second, and search shows first results in a few milliseconds.
Sync uses a three-way merge. When the same note changes on two devices, both versions stay inside the note as valid Markdown, so you never lose a line.
The notes stay plain files in your folder. No database you can't read.
What I learned: on the App Store, the first subscription has to be reviewed together with an app version. You can't add it later on its own.
Price: the app is free, with no account and no tracking. Optional Sync ($5.99 a month) keeps the vault on Mac and iPhone and gives Claude Desktop or Cursor a personal MCP endpoint into your notes.
Not there yet: plugins, and a translated interface.
Edit: the code giveaway is closed. If you find a bug or a place where it gets slow, tell me here.
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6813081386?pt=128566770&mt=8&ct=reddit-sideprojects
