Markdown notes, in your own GitHub repo· open source
A full Markdown workspace — linked notes, offline search, a visual diagram studio, real version history — whose database is a GitHub repository you already own. Nothing is stored on our servers, and there is no ForkLeaf database to be locked out of.
Free forever · No card, no trial · exactly what GitHub access this asks for
Rich text, split, or raw Markdown — the same file either way.
Source
# Sync engine Writes land in IndexedDB first, then drain to GitHub as one **atomic commit**. ## Guarantees - Nothing is lost when the tab closes - Offline edits queue and replay - Conflicts are shown, never merged
Preview
Writes land in IndexedDB first, then drain to GitHub as one atomic commit.
How it works
Four steps, none of which you have to think about. The middle two are the ones other notes apps replace with a database.
Plain Markdown, in a rich editor or in the raw source — the same file either way. It is written to your device before you have finished the word.
Not a row in someone's database. A .md file, in a folder you named, in a repository you already have. Anything that reads Markdown can read it.
Edits are batched into atomic commits and pushed for you. Close the laptop mid-sentence, fly somewhere, keep writing — it catches up when you land.
Real history in a real repository. Clone it, revert it, or walk away with all of it — there is no export step, because there was never an import step.
# Sync engine
Writes land in IndexedDB first, then
drain to GitHub as one atomic commit.
## Guarantees
- Nothing is lost when the tab closes
- Offline edits queue and replay
Features
Plain files, plain git, plain exports — and the linking, search, diagramming, reviewing and running that a real notebook needs. Everything below is in the repository today, not on a roadmap.
[[Wikilinks]] in the Obsidian dialect, with a backlinks panel that quotes the line each link was written on. Link to a note you have not written yet and clicking it writes it.
Meeting notes
Blocked until [[Q3 roadmap]] lands, then start [[Hiring plan]].
2 notes link here
Meeting notes
Blocked until [[Q3 roadmap]] lands…
Planning
Blocked until [[Q3 roadmap]] lands…
Every word of every note, ranked with BM25 and answered in the browser. Results quote the line that matched.
⌕ migration
Hiring plan
…to keep the migration off my desk.
Platform notes
…the migration runs in two phases…
Rich-text blocks, a split view, or raw source. Switch per note; the Markdown on disk is identical either way.
Rich
Split
Source
A visual Mermaid builder for six diagram types, with templates, a cheatsheet and live rendering. Node positions round-trip through the file.
Install it and ForkLeaf registers as a Markdown editor: double-click a file, or run xdg-open, and ⌘S writes that file — not a copy in Downloads.
Writes hit IndexedDB first. The sync queue drains when you reconnect, and tells you plainly what is saved where.
Edit the same note on your phone and your laptop and ForkLeaf shows you both versions instead of silently picking one.
This device
GitHub
One self-contained page, committed to your own repo and served by GitHub Pages. Nothing on our servers, and unpublishing is a deleted file.
Published
you.github.io/notes/q3-roadmap.html
A file in your repo, served by GitHub.
Markdown, HTML, Word and PDF — all rendered in the browser, so the note never leaves your machine to become a file.
Give a fenced block a language and it gets a Run button. bash, Python and JavaScript execute in a throwaway VM, and the output is written into the note underneath — committed with it, replaced on the next run, and kept in the history like anything else.
print("hello world")
— ran 2026-08-27 11:09 UTC · ok · 34ms
hello world
Paste an address and ForkLeaf writes the citation: the page's real title, plus a Wayback archive of it. The link still means something after the site is sold.
https://example.com/post
[The post’s real title](https://example.com/post)
archived copy · web.archive.org
Version numbers, dates, CVEs and linked files that have moved on since you last touched the note. It never claims a note is wrong — only that it is worth re-reading, and always why.
Deploy runbook
Worth re-reading — mentions v14 · 8 months untouched
How I think about scope
Never stale — nothing datable in it
Propose changes to a repository you cannot push to and ForkLeaf opens a real pull request. Read a PR as rendered notes rather than a diff, see who wrote each line, and watch the diagrams change shape between two commits.
Pull request #42
Update the deploy runbook
notes:you/patch-1 → main
Who wrote this line
you · 2 days ago
priya · last month
The toolkit
Not a roadmap. Every row below is shipping in the repository today, and works whether or not you have signed in — the GitHub half simply adds the history.
Write
Rich-text blocks, a live split view, or the raw Markdown. Switch per note — the bytes on disk are identical either way.
Read the docs →Connect
Links, backlinks and search turn a folder of Markdown into something you can actually think in.
Read the docs →Diagram
A visual builder sits on top of the syntax. Drag nodes, edit labels, and the file underneath stays plain Markdown.
Read the docs →Sync
Writes hit your device first and drain to GitHub as atomic commits. Close the laptop mid-sentence; it catches up when you land.
Read the docs →Ship
Every export is rendered in your browser. The note never leaves your machine in order to become a file.
Read the docs →Where this fits
You already have somewhere to put notes, so here is the honest case for moving — first against the categories, then against the products by name.
First by category — the three things you already have open, what each is genuinely good at, and the specific thing ForkLeaf does differently.
Beautiful, syncs everywhere, and someone else runs it.
The catch
Your writing lives in their database, in their format, behind their pricing. The export button is a promise you cannot test until you need it.
With ForkLeaf
Your notes are already plain files in your own repository. There is no export, because there was never an import.
Genuinely yours, fast, and nothing can take it away.
The catch
It is one folder on one machine. Syncing it, versioning it and reading it on your phone are three problems you now own.
With ForkLeaf
The same plain files, with git doing the syncing and the history, and a real editor on every device with a browser.
The storage is already right — it is the repository itself.
The catch
No links between notes, no search worth the name, no diagrams you can see, and nothing at all when the train goes into a tunnel.
With ForkLeaf
Wikilinks, backlinks, full-text search, a visual diagram builder, and an editor that keeps working offline.
Nine questions to ask before you put a decade of thinking somewhere. Notion, OneNote, Obsidian and Evernote answer them too — these are their answers, not ours about them.
| Question | ForkLeaf | Notion | OneNote | Obsidian | Evernote |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Where a note ends upThe thing everything else follows from. | A .md file in a GitHub repository you own | A row in Notion's database, on Notion's servers | A .one notebook in OneDrive | A .md file in a folder on that device | A note in Evernote's cloud |
| Format | Markdown — readable in any editor, for ever | Blocks. Markdown export exists and loses things | A proprietary binary format | Markdown | ENEX, an XML format only Evernote writes |
| History | Every save is a git commit — diffs, blame, revert | Page history, on paid plans, for a limited window | Recent versions, per page | Nothing built in; a plugin or git of your own | Note history on paid plans |
| Sync | git push, to a repository you already pay nothing for | Theirs, included, and required | OneDrive, included | A paid add-on, or a folder-sync tool you wire up | Theirs, limited on the free tier |
| Offline | Fully — edits queue locally and push when you reconnect | Partial, and not something to rely on | Yes | Yes — it is a local app | Partial, on paid plans |
| Diagrams | A Mermaid studio; the diagram renders on GitHub as well | Mermaid in code blocks | Freehand drawing and shapes | Mermaid, plus plugins | Sketches |
| Collaboration | Pull requests and review — proposed, discussed, then merged | Live multiplayer editing — genuinely excellent | Shared notebooks | A paid add-on, or none | Shared notes |
| If the company disappears | Nothing happens. The notes were never here | You have whatever you exported before it happened | Files in OneDrive, in a format only OneNote reads | You still have your folder — same answer, and a good one | You have an ENEX file to find a converter for |
| Price | Free, open source, and no account to close | Free tier, then per person per month | Free with a Microsoft account | Free for personal use; sync and publish cost extra | Free tier with limits, then paid |
The file is the product
Everywhere else the file is an export — a lossy copy you make when you are already leaving. Here it is the original, written the moment you stop typing, readable by every tool that has ever opened a text file.
History you did not have to buy
Not a version panel with a retention window. Real commits: what changed, when, why, and the ability to bring back a paragraph you deleted in March. That is a feature nobody else can sell you, because it is git.
Nothing to migrate, ever again
The last migration you do is the one into a repository. Change your mind about ForkLeaf and your notes do not move — you just open the same folder in something else. That is what makes trying this cheap.
Your notes go where your work already lives
Beside the code, in the review flow your team already runs, published to GitHub Pages when you want them read. No integration, no connector, no export step: the same repository, the same pull request, the same history.
Every app in that table can hold your notes today. One of them still can in ten years without your permission, your payment or your password — because it is not an app holding them at all. It is a folder of Markdown in a repository with your name on it, and ForkLeaf is the window you happen to be reading it through.
Ownership
There is no ForkLeaf notes table. Notes are files in your repository, and the only thing we ever hold is your session cookie.
The GitHub access token is encrypted into an httpOnly cookie the server alone can open. Every API call is proxied, so no script on the page can read it.
Clone the repo. That is the export. Your notes were already plain Markdown in a normal git history the whole time.
The hosted app requests the repo scope. That is broad, and we would rather say so than have you discover it on the consent screen. It is the narrowest classic scope GitHub offers that can write to a private repository — there is no “only this one repo” classic scope to ask for instead.
Pricing
Your notes sit in your own GitHub account, so there is no storage for us to charge you for and no paywall between you and your writing. If ForkLeaf ever disappears, your notes are already in your repository and keep working without it.
The whole application, for everyone.
Freeforever
Start writingBefore you sign in
The rest are in the documentation, which is written for the same reader.
No. The editor works with no account at all — notes are stored on that device and nothing leaves it. Connecting GitHub is what adds sync, history and reading the same notes on another machine. You can start without it and connect later; open the editor and see.
The hosted app requests GitHub’s repo scope, which is broad — it is the narrowest classic scope that can write to a private repository. It is used only to read and commit Markdown in the repositories you connect. The token is encrypted into an httpOnly cookie the browser cannot read. If that is more than you want to grant, sign in with public-repository access only — or use ForkLeaf with no account at all.
Nothing. They are Markdown files in a repository on your own GitHub account, in a normal git history. Clone it and carry on in any editor that reads text. This is the entire reason the app is built this way.
Free, all of it, no tiers. The expensive part of a notes app is storage, and ForkLeaf has none — your notes sit in your GitHub account, not ours. The project is open source under Apache-2.0 and funded by optional sponsorship. There is no paid plan being held back.
If they are Markdown, yes — point ForkLeaf at a repository that already has .md files in it and it reads them where they are, including subdirectories and existing front matter. Obsidian-style [[wikilinks]] are the dialect it speaks natively.
That is the default. Every keystroke is written to IndexedDB on your device first; the commit queue drains to GitHub when there is a network again, and the status bar always says plainly what is saved where.
More in the full FAQ, the security model and what data is stored.
Support
ForkLeaf is free and open source, and it is also somebody's notes. Every route below reaches a person; the first one that fits is the right one.
Most questions are already answered in writing — signing in, syncing, conflicts, exporting, and the errors people actually hit.
Anything else: a bug, a note that will not sync, a question about your data, or a feature you wish existed. A real inbox, read by the person who builds this.
Bugs and feature requests, in public, where anyone else hitting the same thing can find the answer and add to it.
Security findings go through the disclosure policy rather than the public tracker, so a flaw is fixed before it is advertised.
One person answers this inbox, so a reply takes as long as it takes — usually a couple of days. Nothing you send is needed to recover your work in the meantime: your notes are Markdown files in your own repository, and the support page lists what to try first and what to include when you write in.
Free, open source, and stored in a repository you already own. Nothing to install and nothing to migrate off later.
No card. No trial. Your notes never touch our servers.