MindNotes Pro

A local-first whiteboard for drawing, editable templates, and portable exports.

No account, cloud workspace, or drawing analytics. Open the canvas and work.

Open the web app · 中文 · 日本語

What v4 delivers

MindNotes Pro starts on a blank, immediately usable canvas. It focuses on a small set of complete workflows instead of disconnected demos.

Area	Current behavior
Drawing	Freehand brush presets, pressure-aware strokes, rectangles, circles, lines, arrows, text, and images
Editing	Selection, move, resize, rotate, group, lock, copy/paste, undo/redo, and predictable partial-stroke erasing
Workspace	Multiple documents, title/content search, sorting, layers, backgrounds, grid, snapping, zoom, and minimap
Templates	Five built-in editable templates plus reusable custom templates made from canvas content
Persistence	Autosaved v4 documents in IndexedDB, with preferences and custom templates stored locally
Portability	Full-content PNG, JPEG, PDF, and SVG exports; strict v4 JSON backups; v4, v3, and legacy JSON import
Runtimes	Responsive browser app, installable offline PWA, and a sandboxed Electron desktop shell

Local-first means local

• Documents are stored in the browser origin's IndexedDB database, mindnotes-pro-v4.
• The app does not provide an account system, hosted sync, or real-time collaboration.
• Clearing browser site data can remove local documents. Export a JSON backup for important work.
• JSON import always creates a separate editable document instead of overwriting the current one.
• A previous mindnotes-drawing-data local-storage document is migrated on the first empty v4 startup when possible.

Quick start

Requirements: Node.js >=22.22.2 and npm.

git clone https://github.com/11suixing11/mindnotes-pro.git
cd mindnotes-pro
npm ci
npm run dev

Vite serves the app at http://localhost:3000.

Useful commands

Command	Purpose
npm run dev	Start the browser development server
npm run build	Type-check and build the web app
npm run preview	Preview the production web build
npm run test:run	Run the Vitest suite once
npm run test:coverage	Run unit and integration tests with coverage thresholds
npm run test:e2e	Build and run critical Chromium user journeys
npm run lint	Run ESLint over the application source
npm run check	Run lint, tests, web build, and Electron type-checking
npm run dev:desktop	Start Vite and the Electron shell together
npm run build:desktop	Build the web app and package the current desktop platform

Install the Playwright browser once before the first local E2E run:

npx playwright install chromium

Export and recovery

Visual exports are rendered from the complete visible document bounds, not from the current pan and zoom. PNG keeps transparency; JPEG and PDF use the document background; SVG keeps vector content where possible.

The v4 JSON backup contract is intentionally explicit:

{
  "format": "mindnotes-pro-backup",
  "version": 4,
  "exportedAt": "2026-07-31T00:00:00.000Z",
  "document": {
    "title": "Project board",
    "elements": [],
    "layers": [],
    "activeLayerId": "layer-default",
    "bgColor": "#ffffff",
    "backgroundStyle": "plain"
  }
}

Malformed or unsupported backups fail with a visible error. Importing does not silently discard the open document.

Architecture

src/
├── canvas/        Rendering, geometry, brushes, and export helpers
├── components/    React UI and browser interaction orchestration
├── eraser/        Simple geometry eraser and spatial index
├── keyboard/      Shortcut definitions and matching
├── store/         Zustand slices, IndexedDB persistence, schema, and backups
└── templates/     Built-in and custom editable templates

electron/
└── main.mts       Minimal sandboxed desktop shell

e2e/               Playwright critical user journeys

See ARCHITECTURE.md for ownership rules and current refactor priorities.

Product boundary

The project deliberately does not include hosted cloud storage, accounts, telemetry over document content, or real-time multiplayer editing. Those features would change the privacy and maintenance model and are not current goals.

The highest-priority engineering work is reliability: smaller pointer/rendering modules, stronger accessibility, large-document performance evidence, and release automation. See ROADMAP.md.

Contributing

Focused bug fixes, regression tests, accessibility improvements, and clear documentation changes are welcome. Read CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request.

Security reports should follow SECURITY.md. Project changes are recorded in CHANGELOG.md.

License

MIT