Corkboard

A single-file, zero-build visual editor for a local folder of Markdown notes. Every .md file becomes a card on an infinite canvas; edits are saved straight back to disk as plain Markdown.

▶ Open the app — what it is for, and what it is not, is in docs/PRODUCT.md.

How it works

The deployed app is a single static index.html — no server, no backend, no runtime dependencies. (Source lives in src/ and is bundled back into that one file at build time; see Hosting below.) It's local-first: the map is saved in a private on-device store (the browser's Origin Private File System) and reopens automatically every visit — no sign-in, no setup, works on every browser including iPad. Notes never leave the machine.

Cards are linked parent → child; the tree and all edges are derived from each note's mm_parent frontmatter — there is no stored edge list and no database. Layout, colours, and positions live in the same frontmatter (mm_x, mm_y, mm_collapsed, mm_layout, …), so a map travels with its files. Serialization only rewrites the app-owned keys and preserves every other frontmatter field and the note body verbatim. One .md file per node; the filename is the node's identity. The freehand sketch layer is the one exception — it's stored as a single sketch.json data file beside the notes, as world-space polylines.

Storage

All file I/O goes through a single swappable store adapter (src/store/). Two implementations share one interface:

• opfsStore — the local-first on-device default (Origin Private File System). Works on every browser incl. iPad; per-device, no built-in cross-device sync.
• fsaStore — a real local folder on Chrome/Edge (File System Access API), autosaved directly. Point it at a cloud-synced folder (iCloud Drive, Dropbox, …) and the map lives in that cloud with no app-side server config.

.zip import / export moves a map in and out (the inline ZIP reader/writer is zero-dependency). Add ?nofsa to the URL to preview the no-local-folder (iPad-style) layout on desktop.

Features

• Cards rendered from a hand-rolled Markdown subset — headings, links, emphasis, task lists, tables
• Free placement, nesting (a card with children is an outline), sections to group cards
• Colours and emoji tags; straight lines between cards with arrows, dots and labels
• Collapse / focus / find, an outline view, read-only mode
• Undo / redo, image paste & drop
• Autosave back to the source files, with a visible warning if a save fails

Architecture

src/ is split into domain folders, all fully strict-typed TypeScript: core/ (shared mutable state + interaction ui), utils/ (pure helpers — Markdown, frontmatter, model queries), store/ (the swappable I/O boundary), data/persistence.ts (autosave / load / zip orchestration), view/ (camera, layout, edges, theme, icons), features/ (the interactive subsystems — drag, gestures, inline-edit, crud, attachments, search, sketch, history), and main.ts (the render + selection core). Replacing only the store object would retarget the app to an Obsidian vault or a Tauri/native build.

Hosting

A GitHub Action (.github/workflows/deploy.yml) bundles the source with Vite (vite-plugin-singlefile) into a self-contained dist/index.html and deploys it to GitHub Pages on every push to main. Pages "Source" is set to GitHub Actions in the repo settings.

To run locally: npm install, then npm run dev (Vite dev server on localhost:5173). The on-device store needs a secure context, so use the dev server rather than opening the file directly. npm run build produces the deployable single-file dist/; npm run typecheck runs tsc --noEmit.

Tests: npm test checks the file format (vitest). npm run e2e drives the app in a real browser (Playwright, e2e/); the first time, install its browser with npx playwright install chromium.

Versioning

The displayed version is set by the deploy workflow: 0.1.<GitHub run number>, so it bumps automatically per deploy — local builds show 0.1.0-dev instead. It's shown at the bottom of the home sidebar (home button, top left).

License

Open source under the MIT License.