Knot

Ultra-focused quick capture for Obsidian. macOS + iOS, native, local-only.

Knot is a single textarea: type a thought, press send, and the text becomes a real .md file inside your Obsidian vault. There is no list view, no editor, no sync. Your existing setup (Obsidian Sync, iCloud, Git, Syncthing) carries the file to your other devices.

• macOS — menu-bar popover with a configurable global hotkey (default ⌃⌥K). Tear the popover off into a free-floating window if you'd rather keep it on screen.
• iOS — single-screen app, designed for the home-screen icon, the Action Button, and Shortcuts.
• Vault — pick a folder once. Knot writes .md files into it. If your vault uses the Periodic Notes or Core Daily Notes plugins, Knot adopts their daily-note folder and filename pattern on first pick.
• Privacy — local-only by design. No accounts, no servers, no telemetry, no third parties.

See USAGE.md for the full feature walkthrough.

Onboarding and vault setup

On first launch, after a settings reset, or when Knot can no longer locate the saved vault bookmark, Knot walks through setup one step at a time:

1. Pick the Obsidian vault root.
2. Choose the Inbox folder for standalone notes. The vault root is allowed, and the folder picker browses one folder level at a time.
3. Choose the Daily Notes folder for short quick notes.
4. If today's daily note already has markdown headings, choose the heading where quick notes should be appended.

The setup flow updates the same settings exposed later in Settings, so existing behavior remains editable after onboarding.

How notes are routed

Two destinations, auto-decided and always overridable via a Today / Inbox toggle in the editor.

Note shape	Destination
≤ 280 characters and a single line	Bullet appended under ## Quick notes in today's daily file
> 280 characters or multi-line	New .md file in the Inbox folder

If an Inbox note's first line is # Title (1–7 words), Knot uses that heading as the filename and strips it from the body. Otherwise the filename is a timestamp.

All paths, the daily filename pattern, the heading text, the bullet template, and the routing thresholds are configurable in Settings.

Status

v0.1 — first public release. Capture loop is end-to-end on both platforms; macOS has a configurable global hotkey, a tear-off detached window, and an importer for Obsidian's daily-note settings on first vault pick.

Tracked for v0.2+: iOS widgets, App Intents and Shortcuts surface, share-sheet extension.

Requirements

• Xcode 26 or later
• macOS 26 / iOS 26 (deployment targets)
• A paid Apple Developer account if you want to install on a real iPhone for longer than 7 days
• An Obsidian vault accessible to the OS:
  • macOS: any folder you can navigate to.
  • iOS: the vault must be visible in the Files app — either iCloud Drive, or a local Obsidian vault with "Show in Files" enabled in Obsidian's vault settings.

Build

The Xcode project is generated from project.yml via XcodeGen:

./bootstrap.sh
open Knot.xcodeproj

bootstrap.sh installs XcodeGen via Homebrew if needed and runs xcodegen generate. After that, build the Knot-macOS or Knot-iOS scheme like any other project.

KnotKit (the logic core) has its own SwiftPM tests:

swift test --package-path Packages/KnotKit

Project layout

Knot/
  Shared/        SwiftUI views and view model used on both platforms
  macOS/         AppKit shell — NSStatusItem popover, optional
                 detached NSWindow, global hotkey
  iOS/           Single SwiftUI scene
Packages/
  KnotKit/       Pure Swift package — file I/O, models, formatting,
                 unit tests. No UI, no platform deps.
project.yml      XcodeGen project definition (the source of truth)
USAGE.md         End-user documentation

KnotKit contains every platform-independent piece — file writing, the "## Quick notes" heading splicer, slug generation, routing, the Obsidian-config importer. The two app targets are thin SwiftUI shells over it.

How notes are written

Short notes (≤ 280 chars, single line) become a bullet appended under the ## Quick notes heading in <vault>/Daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md. If the file or the heading don't exist yet, Knot creates both. Format:

## Quick notes

- 14:32 your note here

Longer notes become a new file at <vault>/Inbox/YYYY-MM-DD HHmm.md (or <vault>/Inbox/<heading>.md if the first line is a 1–7-word # Title). On a filename collision, Knot appends a counter.

Date format strings

Filename patterns use the Moment.js display format spec — the same conventions Obsidian's Daily Notes / Periodic Notes plugins use, so existing format strings (YYYY-MM-DD, YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD dddd, etc.) work as-is. Slashes act as path separators, so a daily filename pattern of YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD produces Daily/2026/04/2026-04-25.md. Knot creates the subfolders for you.

In the daily-note bullet template, anything inside {{...}} is a Moment pattern; {{content}} is the note text. Default:

- {{HH:mm}} {{content}}

You can use any Moment tokens, e.g. - [[{{YYYY-MM-DD}}]] {{HH:mm}} {{content}}.

Concurrency safety

Knot uses NSFileCoordinator for every read and write so Obsidian and Obsidian Sync's own FilePresenters coordinate correctly. Daily-note appends are read-modify-write inside a single coordination block; Inbox writes are atomic. If a true conflict happens (typically because another device wrote the same daily file while offline), Obsidian's own *.conflict-*.md convention takes over — Knot doesn't try to outsmart it.

License

GPL-2.0 — see LICENSE.