note.md
Local-first academic IDE for Mac: read papers, cite sources, and write your thesis in one private app
If you are a solo researcher on a Mac, note.md is the most coherent local-first replacement for the Zotero-Obsidian-Preview stack we have seen, and the free tier alone is a complete writing workspace. The premium AI is honest about its job: semantic search, automatic indexing, Matrix extraction, and Evidence Scan find and organize what you already read instead of drafting your prose. At $49.99/year (about $4.17/mo) or $99.99 once for lifetime access, it undercuts most cloud-AI writing subscriptions. Keep the stack if you need Word or Google Docs citation integration, Windows or Linux, phone sync, or real-time collaboration with co-authors.
Verified 10d ago · liveness 68/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/note-md
- PhD students managing a large literature library on a Mac
- Researchers who want reading, notes, citations, and writing in one window
- Graduate students writing a thesis with heavy citation requirements
- Researchers who need unpublished work to stay on their own machine
- Windows or Linux users — note.md is macOS only
- Teams that need real-time collaboration in a shared workspace
- Researchers who require Word or Google Docs citation integration
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Skip note.md if you work primarily on Windows or Linux, need citations inside Word or Google Docs, or want cloud AI to draft and rewrite your prose rather than just search and organize what you have already read.
Premium is an in-app purchase through the App Store, so prices are quoted in USD and may vary by region once Apple applies local taxes and currency conversion.
The free tier covers the whole writing workspace, so a solo researcher writing one thesis can use note.md indefinitely without paying. Premium at $49.99/year (about $4.17/mo) or $99.99 once is well below most cloud-AI writing subscriptions, and student pricing at $29.99/year undercuts it further. The lifetime option is the cheapest long-run path if you expect to keep using it past two years.
In short
note.md — Local-first academic IDE for Mac: read papers, cite sources, and write your thesis in one private app. Best for PhD students managing a large literature library on a Mac, Researchers who want reading, notes, citations, and writing in one window, Graduate students writing a thesis with heavy citation requirements. Free to start; paid plans from $4.99/mo.
What's new in note.md
Checked yesterdayAcross the latest 1 update: 1 news mention.
What people actually say about note.md — is it worth it?
We ran a structured research pass across product reviews, community discussions, and post-purchase forum threads to surface the patterns vendors won't publish themselves. Below: the recurring strengths, the hidden costs people mention most, and the cohort that consistently regrets adopting this tool.
13 mentions across 3 sources (Hacker News, Product Hunt, Bluesky) · researched Jul 4, 2026.
Average across the 3 sources that answered — each source counts once, not each post.
- +Local-first markdown ensures no vendor lock-in and full privacy.
- +Unifies PDF reading, note-taking, citations, and writing in one app.
- +Local AI runs on-device, no data sent to cloud—great for sensitive research.
- +Smart citations generate BibTeX/APA from PDF metadata automatically.
- +Graph view visualizes connections between sources and notes.
- −Mac-only—no Windows or Linux support confirmed.
- −No cross-device sync; all files stored locally on one machine.
- −Limited community feedback; early stage, few user reviews.
- −Premium AI pricing not disclosed; potential cost concern.
- −Learning curve for block-based markdown and slash commands?
- • Premium pricing not publicly shared yet; may be expensive
- • No cloud storage; must manage own backups (potentially extra cost)
Viability Score
How well maintained and how widely used is note.md? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: October 2026
How we score →Key Features
- Local-first markdown editor and private vault on macOS
- Reading Studio: side-by-side PDF reading and highlighting in one pane
- Smart citations generated as BibTeX or APA from PDF metadata
- /cite anchors citations to a bookmark with one-click return to the passage
- Block-based markdown with slash commands (/cite, /pdf, /link, /wiki)
- Source and literature management with one-click .bib export
- Graph View of articles and sources with Neo4j-friendly export
- Bidirectional links that build the knowledge graph as you write
- GitHub-flavored markdown, complex tables, and LaTeX math
- Semantic search by meaning over indexed passages (Premium, local AI)
- Automatic indexing of figures, charts, and tables from PDFs (Premium)
- Matrix extraction fills literature-review tables with editable AI suggestions (Premium)
- Evidence Scan finds supporting, contradicting, and nuanced passages (Premium)
- On-device AI: no cloud upload, no model training on your notes
- Works offline and stores data as plain markdown and PDF files
About note.md
note.md is a macOS academic IDE that bundles a PDF reader, reference manager, markdown note editor, and writing environment into a single window. Instead of running Zotero for references, Obsidian for notes, Preview for PDFs, and a plugin to hold it together, you get one local-first workspace where every file stays on your Mac as plain markdown and PDFs. The target reader is a solo researcher in a demanding program — the site name-checks Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge, and ETH Zürich — who wants the passage they read in March one click away in November. The free tier is the whole writing workspace, not a trial: a local markdown editor with GitHub-flavored markdown, complex tables, and LaTeX math; Reading Studio's side-by-side PDF and note pane; smart citations that generate BibTeX or APA from PDF metadata; source management with .bib export; and a Graph View of notes and sources with Neo4j-friendly export. /cite anchors a citation to the exact bookmark, so clicking it later returns you to the passage plus the note you attached at the time. Premium ($8.99/month billed monthly, $49.99/year — about $4.17/mo, roughly 54% less than paying monthly — or $99.99 once for lifetime access; students $4.99/month or $29.99/year verified through the App Store) adds four on-device AI workflows: semantic search that finds passages by meaning, automatic indexing that pulls figures, charts, and tables out of PDFs, Matrix extraction that fills an editable literature-review table, and Evidence Scan, which treats a sentence as a claim and returns supporting, contradicting, and nuanced passages from your own library. The AI proposes; you review and write the synthesis. Every model runs locally, and note.md's own technical articles cover chunk sizes, ranking math, and failure modes rather than hiding them. Against the Zotero-plus-Obsidian stack, the trade is integration versus ecosystem. Zotero is free, cross-platform, and plugs into Word and Google Docs; Obsidian has a plugin for nearly everything and syncs to your phone. note.md is macOS-only and younger, but if you are on a Mac and tired of maintaining the wiring between four apps, it collapses the stack into one window.
Behind the Verdict
note.md's core bet is that the four apps a researcher runs — Zotero, Obsidian, a PDF reader, and a writing app — should be one window, not four arranged by hand every session. The homepage lays out the comparison explicitly: in Zotero plus Obsidian you annotate in Zotero then pull the highlight across with a plugin; in note.md the PDF and the editor sit side by side and every /cite is linked back to the bookmark and the note you wrote at the time. That linkage is the real product, more than any AI feature. The free tier is unusually complete — local markdown editor and private vault, Reading Studio side-by-side PDF and highlights, smart citations in BibTeX or APA, citations anchored to a bookmark with one-click return, source and literature management, Graph View with Neo4j export, and GitHub-flavored markdown with tables and LaTeX. If you never pay, you still have a working thesis pipeline. What Premium buys is organization over your own library, not prose. Semantic search finds passages by meaning when your query wording does not match the source; automatic indexing pulls figures, charts, and tables out of PDFs into your drafts; Matrix extraction fills an editable literature-review table; Evidence Scan treats a sentence as a claim and returns supporting, contradicting, and nuanced passages from your own sources. The vendor is explicit that the AI proposes and you write the synthesis — no cloud prose generation, no summarization-as-a-service. note.md also publishes technical explainers on its local indexing and retrieval architecture, including what the app does and does not send off your machine. The honest weaknesses: note.md is macOS-only, so a lab split across Windows and Linux cannot standardize on it. There is no shared real-time workspace for co-authors, and no phone sync — your vault is a folder on one Mac. Researchers who need citations inside Word or Google Docs will not be served. And the AI is deliberately narrower than cloud assistants: it will not draft your discussion section. If your bottleneck is wiring plugins together on a Mac, this collapses four tools into one. If your bottleneck is collaboration or cross-platform, it does not.
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Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas note.md actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
You drop every paper for the chapter into note.md, read them in Reading Studio's side-by-side pane, highlight key passages, and drop /cite into your markdown notes so each citation links back to the exact bookmark.
Outcome: You stop bouncing between a Zotero tab and an Obsidian vault, and every citation in your draft already points at the passage and the note you wrote when you read it.
You sort papers into your library, let Matrix extraction fill an editable literature-review table with local AI suggestions, and use Evidence Scan on a draft claim to surface supporting, contradicting, and nuanced passages from your own sources.
Outcome: You get a populated matrix you review, correct, and write from, with every claim still linked to the source passage it came from.
You write in block-based markdown with slash commands for citations, source images, evidence scanning, and links, and watch the Graph View build as each /cite, /link, /wiki, or /pdf becomes an edge.
Outcome: Your notes and sources turn into the chapter you are actually writing, and the graph shows you connections between sources you had not noticed.
Use Cases
- Read and annotate research papers in a single pane, with highlights and citations linked to your markdown notes
- Manage and organize all your PDFs and sources, tagging and exporting them as BibTeX for your thesis
- Use semantic search to find passages by meaning, without needing exact wording
- Extract figures, charts, and tables from PDFs automatically and insert them into your article drafts
- Build a knowledge graph of your sources and notes, and export it in Neo4j format for further analysis
- Scan your library for evidence to support or challenge a claim, with AI suggesting passages you wrote about
Models Under the Hood
as of 2026-10-08
Limitations
- note.md is a macOS-only desktop app that stores everything as plain markdown files on your Mac, and all AI features run on-device rather than in the cloud.
- The local AI is deliberately scoped to searching and organizing your own research (semantic search, automatic indexing, matrix extraction, Evidence Scan) rather than generating prose.
- The advanced AI workflows are gated behind Premium, priced at $8.99/month, $49.99/year, or $99.99 lifetime (students $4.99/month or $29.99/year), purchased via the App Store.
as of 2026-09-28
Verification history
We have re-verified note.md 8 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
Showing the 6 most recent of 8 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Plans compared
For each published note.md tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
Free
$0
Ideal for
Solo researcher who wants a complete Mac writing pipeline — PDF reading, citations, notes, and graph — without paying anything
What this tier adds
Starting tier: the full writing workspace is free forever, with the local-AI workflows held back for Premium
Premium Monthly
$8.99/mo
Ideal for
Researcher who wants the local-AI workflows now and prefers not to commit to a year upfront
What this tier adds
Adds semantic search, automatic indexing, Matrix extraction, and Evidence Scan, billed monthly at $8.99 with cancel anytime
Premium Annual
$49.99/yr
Ideal for
Graduate student or researcher certain they will use the local-AI workflows through a full thesis cycle
What this tier adds
Same four local-AI features as monthly at $49.99/year, about $4.17/mo and roughly 54% less than paying monthly
Premium Lifetime
$99.99 once
Ideal for
Researcher who expects to keep using note.md for years and would rather not hold a subscription
What this tier adds
A single $99.99 payment unlocks Premium permanently, replacing recurring monthly or annual billing
Student Premium Monthly
$4.99/mo
Ideal for
Enrolled student in a demanding program who wants local AI while paying term by term
What this tier adds
Same four local-AI workflows as Premium Monthly at $4.99/month, gated by App Store student verification
Student Premium Annual
$29.99/yr
Ideal for
Student who will use the local-AI workflows across a full academic year
What this tier adds
All four local-AI workflows at $29.99/year, the lowest recurring price, verified through the App Store
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where note.md's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
The free tier covers the whole writing workspace, so a solo researcher writing one thesis can use note.md indefinitely without paying. Premium at $49.99/year (about $4.17/mo) or $99.99 once is well below most cloud-AI writing subscriptions, and student pricing at $29.99/year undercuts it further. The lifetime option is the cheapest long-run path if you expect to keep using it past two years.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of note.md — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
On a Mac, install note.md from the App Store and you are writing in the free editor within minutes — the vault, Reading Studio, citations, and Graph View need no configuration. Expect an hour or so to import a paper library and start tagging sources; Premium's local-AI features need the same on-device indexing pass before semantic search and Evidence Scan return useful results.
Switching to or from note.md
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From Zotero + Obsidian: bring your Zotero library across and move your Obsidian markdown notes into the note.md vault, since both are already plain markdown files.
- →From a standalone PDF reader: import your PDFs into the note.md library, fill or confirm metadata, and citations become available from each PDF.
- →From Zotero alone: keep your .bib exports and re-import sources into note.md's source management, then use Reading Studio for the PDF side.
- →From Obsidian alone: copy your vault folder in as markdown — note.md reads GitHub-flavored markdown, tables, and LaTeX math as plain-text files.
- ↗To Zotero + Obsidian: export your sources as a .bib file and copy your markdown vault out, since note.md stores everything as plain markdown and PDF files you can open in any editor.
- ↗To Obsidian: point a new vault at your note.md markdown files, accepting that Reading Studio and anchored citations stay behind.
- ↗To Neo4j or a graph tool: export the Graph View in Neo4j-friendly format to keep the source-to-note network outside the app.
Resources & Guides
- Resourcenotemd.org
Workflows · note.md
Helpful link from notemd.org
- Resourcenotemd.org
Articles · note.md
Helpful link from notemd.org
- Guidenotemd.org
Guides · note.md
In-depth how-to from notemd.org
- Resourcenotemd.org
Skills · note.md
Helpful link from notemd.org
- Resourcenotemd.org
Compare · note.md
Helpful link from notemd.org
- Resourcenotemd.org
About · note.md
Helpful link from notemd.org
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “note.md”, and we withheld 6: 6 could not be judged, because “note.md” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about note.md.
Official links
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Textero AI Essay Writer
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Featured Head-to-Head Comparisons
Note Md vs Surge Ai
Choose Surge AI if you are an AI lab or enterprise needing expert human feedback for RLHF, red teaming, or benchmarking frontier models—backed by domain experts and rigorous benchmarks like Antidote and Riemann-bench. Choose note.md if you are a PhD student or academic researcher on Mac who wants a local-first, private workspace to read, annotate, cite, and write research papers without juggling multiple tools. They serve completely different needs and are not direct competitors.
Note Md vs Praktika
Praktika and note.md serve entirely different needs: Praktika is a mobile language tutor for conversational practice, while note.md is a Mac-only academic workspace for reading and writing. Your choice depends on whether you need to improve spoken fluency or manage a research literature library. There's no direct competition, so pick the tool that matches your primary workflow.
Alternatives to note.md
View allopenscience
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Elicit
Semantic search over 138M papers and 545K clinical trials, with a cited research agent that writes evidence reviews you can defend.
Textero AI Essay Writer
Textero AI Essay Writer turns your topic, rubric, and uploaded sources into a structured, citation-formatted academic draft.
Frequently Asked Questions
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