Kevin S Lin

Dendron v100 - Open source note taking for developers

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Dendron is an open source note taking tool aimed at developers to make managing knowledge fast, efficient, and delightful by combining the simplicity of markdown with the power of VSCode.

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Kevin S Lin
Hey Product Hunt 👋 Founder here. I started Dendron because I wanted a solution that could help me find the information I already had. I was tired of looking up the same stack overflow solution for a problem I had already encountered and wanted a tool that could help me externalize information in such a way that made it easy to find again later. After spending years experimenting with different systems, I came to realize that having a *well-structured organization* for knowledge was the only way I could consistently find things. It's not a radical concept in itself but requires a lot of work from the individual to make it work. Dendron enables knowledge management at scale by helping users organize their knowledge, not through good intentions, but with the aid of software. It lets you create flexible hierarchies that can be consistently applied and also refactored so that you can slowly evolve the structure of your knowledge base over time. Dendron borrows heavily from prior work in developer tooling and programming languages, taking concepts like type systems and schemas and applying them to general knowledge. Dendron is available as both a VSCode/VSCodium plugin as well as a CLI. All notes are stored locally and can also be selectively published as a static site using our open-source nextjs template. You can use Dendron standalone or in the same workspace where you keep your code - if you choose the latter, you can link to code files inside of Dendron and vice versa! You can learn more about Dendron and our approach to knowledge management via the following links: - [It's Not You - It's Your Knowledge Base](https://www.kevinslin.com/notes/... Dendron's philosophy on knowledge management - [A Hierarchy First Approach to Note Taking](https://blog.dendron.so/notes/3d... Dendron's methodology for note-taking - [Dendron Inc](https://blog.dendron.so/notes/N9... Dendron's business plan We also have an active discord community where we talk about all things knowledge management: https://discord.gg/AE3NRw9 Thanks for reading, Kevin
Phyo Arkar Lwin
@kevin_s_lin thank you very much for dendron. I would recommend starters to watch a tutorial first to unlock full potential. before using. Also do you have plan to put built-in pdf exporter that understands frontmatter of Dendron and PDF generator that build a book like nexjs export? I have to use external tools to do that.
David
Dendron is a game changer, we replaced Confluence with it at our startup. Confluence wasn’t scaling well, made it difficult to find information, and difficult to reorganize. Dendron is unopinionated and is more of a library than a framework - but they offer opinions and sane defaults when you need them - it’s the result of strong software design decisions, reminiscent of react in my opinion. I have great faith in dendron and I’m very proud to be a part of the community and use them at my workplace and in my personal life to manage my information at scale no matter where it comes from.
Kevin S Lin
@d1onysus Thanks @d1onysus :) We'll continue working hard to make sure that faith isn't misplaced!
Shivayan Bora
I have been using Dendron since last 2 months and I have to say I am in love with the product. It is so amazing for Developers who want to keep a personal knowledge management and easier to store and find whatever piece of information you're looking for. I am so grateful to be a part of the Dendron community.
Kevin S Lin
@shivayan_bora Thanks, we're grateful to have you :)
Jonathan Yeung
Very rarely does a product cause a paradigm shift, but Dendron has done exactly that for me. When I first saw Dendron's hybrid approach of combining a traditional hierarchical structure with the fluidity of bi-directional linking, it altered my approach to organizing my personal information - I spent the next week reorganizing all of my personal notes into Dendron and haven't looked back since. Accessing my personal information has never been easier or faster, and it has incentivized me to keep track of all kinds of information that I hadn't been before. The other big idea of Dendron that has drawn me in is the idea of applying programming concepts to information management. IDE's have become very powerful tools for scaling and maintaining code bases, so why can't the same ideas scale and maintain information as well? This is the Dendron's key differentiator for me - having the ability to use concepts like refactor to quickly reorganize my thoughts without breaking links is a game changer. And there's so much more potential in this area that's unexplored - from having structural benefits like a type system and schemas to enabling fast querying with db like data models. I'm excited to see what Dendron will become.
Kevin S Lin
@jonathan_yeung we are still in the stone ages for note taking. lets make some fire 🔥
Jon Pawley
I love Dendron! I've been using it for, ooh, almost 10 months now, and it is just superb for jotting down notes, structuring tasks, documenting my work, and generally keeping myself organised with my "Most Important Tasks"! Love it. And I know I've barely scratched the surface with what it can do. I need to spend a little more time setting up my workspace so that it is _just_ as I like it. Well done Kevin and Dendron Team on a superb product! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Would Dendron again.
Kevin S Lin
@jon_pawley Thanks. Curious, what kind of customizations are you looking to make? We've been doing some investments on this front with custom theme support as well as graph features so wondering if there's something specific you have in mind here?
Jon Pawley
Kia ora @kevin_s_lin, and thanks for your response. I need to spend a little more time fully understanding how to use schemata and templated notes, so that I can get my daily notes laid out in a "Most Important Task" layout (similar to GTD). I really do think that's the only thing I need to do to make it for me!
Kaan Genç
I use Dendron both as a personal knowledge base and to document my open source software personal projects. For my personal knowledge base, I keep notes on everything I might find useful. From how to replace the battery on my car to how to cook a great pizza, everything goes into Dendron. Now you'd think keeping all these different topics in the same place would make it hard to find anything, but Dendron makes it very easy to organize the knowledge so I can always find what I'm looking for. My recipes have their own hierarchies, and so do the list of video games I want to play and movies I want to watch, my notes on the books I've read, or the ideas on blog posts I've had. What's also amazing is that Dendron allows me to create schemas that describe these structures. Not everything has schemas, but for some things like recipes I have a structure in mind that I want them to fit. So I created schemas to organize the recipes how they make sense to me. At the same time, Dendron doesn't stop me if I need to take a quick note and I don't care about where it goes in the hierarchy of notes. Instead, Dendron allows me to reorganize these notes later so I can take notes now and figure out where the notes fit later. I also love that I can publish my notes on a website. I've published my recipes with Dendron, which is very convenient when I'm at the grocery store and trying to remember what ingredients I need! It's also a good way to share your notes with others.
Kevin S Lin
@seriousbug i've borrowed some of your recipes :)
Paolo e Basta
Dendron is the perfect tool to organize "knowledge" in a new way. In fact, in **your own** way. And if you don't have one, you are also covered because Dendron enables you to grow one. I tried similar tools in the past, but nothing makes me so comfortable and with so much freedom. For example, the refactor tool allows you to change your mind about your notes/knowledge base/concepts with just some keystrokes, effectively making your notes evolve painlessly. Embracing your way, it's a great everyday companion for this kind of stuff. It's not even easy to describe the Dendron experience in words.
Kevin S Lin
@paolo_e_basta thanks for the kind words! change your thinking, not your notes was one of our original taglines :)
Alexandre Costa
I love dendron! Its my first approach at markdown docs, and when I'm forced to use markdown outside of dendron I really miss the key functionalities it provides. Its a great tool, very non-intrusive and lets me do what i need to do.
Kevin S Lin
@alexandre97costa happy to hear this. thanks for the review!
Ryan Hill
I've been using Dendron for a few months and we're already building an entire documentation framework on it in our team because it was the perfect choice. The Devs and community are fantastic to answer questions and support as well!
Kevin S Lin
@rlh1994 I'm dying to hear more details about your documentation framework. Thanks for taking a chance in us Ryan :)
SHIVAM POKHRIYAL
Using Dendron for a month now. Loving it so far. It is very well curated for developers. It has similar terminologies to dev, which makes it easier to follow.
Kevin S Lin
@shivam_pokhriyal2 glad to hear it. please let me know if there's anything you'd like us to focus on :)
KimSia Sim 🇸🇬💻📗
I like dendron. I funded for about 7 months on the 10 dollar contribution plan because i like their mission. Happy to see them do well.
Kevin S Lin
@kimstacks really appreciate you support. thanks for the review!
Samee Hassan
Nice work! Congrats!
Kevin S Lin
@sameehsn thanks!
Quirin M
I've been using Dendron for about a year now and absolutely love it. It's very versatile and customizable so it's not only suited for programming but also for e.g. personal notes, study notes and as a journal. Being an extension for VSCode gives access to the huge number of other extensions. Being able to use git is really useful too.
Kevin S Lin
@quirinm happy to hear this. thanks for the review!
Taylor
I've been using Dendron since February and it's changed the way I take notes for the better. Dare I say, note taking is now fun! When I started using it, I was a software tester so I was able to organize my test data, users, steps and link them with the user stories. What made it a game changer for me was being able to paste screenshots directly into the notes, I was blown away by this. Now I'm a Scrum Master and I'm taking more notes than ever before and I'm taking advantage of the "@user" linking which has been incredibly useful as I can type someone's name and find out what meetings they were in. Just like with any note taking system, it takes discipline to stay organized and Dendron is no different, however getting organized is incredibly easy because files and hierarchies can be renamed on the fly and all of the links and backlinks will still work. One other great thing is, you can just create a quick note a "Scratch Note" start typing and then later on, rename it with ease. Templates and schemas are really incredible and with the new "Apply Template" command, that will make things even easier. In addition to the product, the Founder (Kevin), team and the community have been really great. There's still a lot for me to discover with this tool and I'm really excited to see where this project goes as I truly believe it has a bright future! Congrats Kevin and team for hitting this milestone!!! :)
Kevin S Lin
"@user @rzlnx88 Thanks for the kind words Taylor :)
ilana Lin
Even if you are not a note-taking-note-organizing-type-of-person, the community in the dendron discord is absolutely wonderful and something worth checking out.
Kevin S Lin
@ilana_lin the question is - are you a note-taking-note-organizing-type-of-person? :P
Cameron Yick
I have used Dendron nearly every week for the past year and a half. It was already compelling when I first discovered it, but it's been amazing thrilling to watch the product get better with every weekly release. Both the core software and the wonderful Dendron discord community have been a core part of my programming and personal organization workflow. The team's unique approach to improving the capture, retrieval, and organization phases of knowledge management via interactions and techniques honed in the world of software engineering (refactoring, transclusion, etc) has the potential to be very transformative, even for folks who are not working in software engineering roles.
Kevin S Lin
@cameron_yick Thanks Cameron, both for the review as well as the thoughtful conversations and finds from PKM :)
Harshita Joshi
I use Dendron to store all the standard operating procedures we have in our project. The workflows range from uploading an image to aws to onboarding a new member. The impressive thing about Dendron is that it is flexible and can be strict as needed. One can start writing notes in free form and can restructure them as they develop. Alternatively, it can be organized using schemas and templates. For personal organization, I use Dendron to keep track of my monthly readings and language course notes. For every article/novel I read, I summarize my takeaways under a reading hierarchy and by the end of the month, I can see my reading progress through a graph. I love the keyboard-focused ux which makes every command a hotkey away.
Kevin S Lin
@harshita_joshi1 if you ever want to share those readings, a reminder that we have a community showcase :) https://wiki.dendron.so/notes/3a...
Юрий Яковлев
As a technical writer I'm into texts — and that's how I found Markdown. After more deep research I've became aware of VSCode and Dendron. A problem with large amount of textual data is keeping it structured and Dendron handles it pretty neat: both easy and flexible. If you already have been dealing with notes and other forms of texts — you definitely should (must) try Dendron, and if you haven't — you are going to start doing it with Dendron. P.S. Community is awesome too.
Kevin S Lin
@new_user_172202260d820bfa9 really appreciate you support. thanks for the review!
Matthew Bellringer
I've been using Dendron for over a year, and it's been the most adaptable and useful note-taking tool I've used so far. It's particularly good if you like to structure things your own way, rather than following someone else's idea of how things should be organised. The publishing features are a huge bonus, and mean I can easily share notes with whoever I want to. The way Dendron integrates with existing tools like VScode and Git means that it fits in very easily with everything else I do, too.
Kevin S Lin
@matthew_bellringer Thanks Matthew! really appreciate you support.
Martin Stemplinger
Using Dendron now for almost 1,5 years has improved my note-taking tremendously. There are lots of great tools out there for creating notes but none has helped me so much to find notes again. And that's what you take ones for
Kevin S Lin
@bassmann aka find the notes you already have :) thanks for the kind words!