formicaria

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formicaria stores each note as a single Markdown file with YAML frontmatter, in a directory you control. It runs as a local web application: a small server on your machine, and your browser as the interface. There is no account, no cloud service and no network dependency.

A vault is an ordinary directory of files, and becomes a git repository wherever git is available. Running several — one per audience, such as personal notes, a lab's notes, and a paper shared with a collaborator — is the normal case, and is what the name refers to: a formicarium is one colony's nest, and formicaria is the plural.

Notes, tasks and shared documents are not separate systems. A task is a note with a due property; a shared note is a note in a different repository. A meal you ate and a set you lifted are notes too, so a food log and a training log sit beside your writing, in the same files, and travel with it.

The app gathers its views into four groups: Library (your notes), Tasks (board and agenda), Food and Fitness. The last two can be hidden in Settings if you want only a notebook.

Food and fitness

Both are early, and neither has been checked by anyone but the author. Nothing here is advice: every figure names the body that published it. The manual's chapter is Food and training.

Food — four views: Day, Menu, Trends, Diet.

• Log what you eat, by weight or as a range when you only know it roughly, at the time you ate it. The list of 18,300 foods comes with the app (the French, German, Swiss and Italian tables, USDA where they have none) and is searched offline.
• Packaged food: write it down from its label, or look it up by its barcode — typed, or read from a photograph — at Open Food Facts, asked only when you press. On a computer the assistant can read the label off a photograph and fill it in for you to check; a phone keeps the photograph with the food so that can be done later.
• Recipes are notes: your own, and 54 public-domain ones carried word for word.
• A menu for the days ahead, with a shopping list, and a list of what is in your kitchen.
• Follow a diet from a library of sourced ones, or set your own targets, and see on the day's screen how you measure up, with dishes for what the day is short of. Each diet comes with an example day to start from.
• Every vitamin and mineral beside its reference value, and your weight as a trend.

Fitness — three views: Week, Exercises, Regime.

• A timetable for the week: open a day and fill it by picking from a list, which arrives with sourced numbers you can change. Routines repeat on the days you choose.
• 117 exercise cards, with and without equipment, in the words of the body that published each (the NHS, the U.S. Army's manual), with films to watch.
• Follow a regime from a library of sourced ones — among them the Norwegian 4×4 and interval walking — each with a week to start from, and see what the week still lacks.

Features

The following require only a browser.

Feature	Description
Notes	Markdown with YAML frontmatter, one note per file. The editor renders as you write, and the text is still the file: editing in the application or in an external editor round-trips byte for byte.
Tasks and scheduling	Any note accepts start and due properties, each with an optional time, so all-day deadlines and timed meetings use the same field.
Board	Kanban grouped by any property, not only status. Dragging a card sets that property and its position in the column.
Agenda	Month and week calendar drawing a bar from start to due, plus a list grouped by urgency.
Reminders	A note with a start or a due date reminds you at its time, once you turn it on in Settings. On an Android phone it shows while the app is open; on a computer formicaria stays running quietly for it after you close the page, with the assistant's model stopped.
Food and fitness	A food log and a training log kept as notes, with diets and regimes to follow: see above.
Timeline	Notes ordered as a journal by day.
Import	Point at a Logseq or Obsidian folder and it becomes notes, with links between them kept and tags lifted into properties.
Papers	A paper is a note: made from a pasted BibTeX entry, a DOI or an arXiv link.
Themes	Colours and type are a CSS file in the vault, so a theme travels with the notes; which one is on is chosen per device.
Updating	The app says when a newer version exists, then gets it, checks it and installs it, from Settings. The previous version is kept to go back to.
Search	Full-text search over all notes via SQLite FTS5, with case and accent folding.
Note references	[Title](note:…) renders as a live title chip; following one opens the target, and Back returns to the source. In the tiled layout it opens in a pane alongside.

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗