NTA

A simple note-taking app with a self-hosted sync & backup server.

Features

• Simple Interface: Minimal design focused on writing.
• Command Palette: Anything extra is handled through Ctr+P following a command like .open, .make, .import etc.
• Works offline: Install as a PWA for offline access.
• Sync & Backup: Powered by Yjs CRDTs and a Hocuspocus server, just point the app to your self-hosted server to backup your notes and sync across devices.

App

• Option 1: Just use https://nta.glebbash.dev

• Option 2: Deploy yourself on GitHub Pages or any static hosting. It's just a single page Vite app with PWA config, run npm i && npm run build and serve the contents of the dist folder. Ensure your hosting supports HTTPS if you want PWA features to work properly.

Sync & Backup server

The server is powered by Hocuspocus, a Yjs websocket server implementation.

Connection

When you have a server set up, use the following UI commands:

• .key set your user key - any device sharing the same user key will get its notes synced together. If you have multiple users on the same server, think of it as a username+password combo field.
• .sync command entering wss://<your-server-url>::<TOKEN> to connect to your server. (The double colon is used as a separator, it's not a typo)

Data Storage and Backup

Notes are stored locally on devices first, but the sync server maintains a complete database of all changes across users. Local data on a device might not have all latest version notes until they are opened - rely on the server for full backups.

Assembling the server

You can assemble it as you like (docs).

You can host it on Fly.io (for free) and it will just work, but you'll need to worry about data backup, a VPS is better if you just want to ssh in and copy your data.

Note on TLS:

You must have a separate TLS termination proxy. I used Cloudflare DNS SSL proxy that came with a domain, but you can also use Nginx or something.

If you go without TLS you'd have to serve the app over HTTP as well, since browsers block non-secure websocket connections from secure contexts.

You can also use a self-signed cert and add an exception in your browser, but that's quite annoying cause you'd have to do it on every device you want to sync with.

Note on serverless hosting:

it might sound appealing to just deploy the server on a serverless platform like Deno Deploy or Cloudflare Workers, but it won't work because the server needs to maintain a persistent websocket connection with the clients, and serverless platforms typically don't support that. Thus you'll need to have a VPS or use something like Fly.io that can run a long-running process.

My setup

I tried a bunch of different hosting providers and setups, the one I ended up with uses a VPS (that I already had for other projects) to have easy access to notes data and a domain from Cloudflare with their free SSL proxy in front of the server. A bunch of domain registrars offer free DNS hosting with SSL proxy, so you can just buy a cheap domain and use that.

Prerequisites:

• Node.js 24+ using NVM
• A Linux system with systemd

Step 1: Clone the repo and install deps:

git clone https://github.com/glebbash/nta --depth 1 && npm i

Step 2: Configure the server by creating a data/.env:

PORT=6969
TOKEN=<any-random-string-here>

NOTE: the token is used as as an API key. Treat it like a secret, anyone with the token and your user key can read and update your notes.

Step 3: Create the systemd service file:

cat << EOF | sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/nta.service
[Unit]
Description=NTA Server
After=network.target

[Service]
User=$USER
WorkingDirectory=$PWD
ExecStart=$(which node) ./sync-server.ts
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

Step 4: Manage the service:

# (re)start the service, and enable on boot
sudo systemctl daemon-reload \
  && sudo systemctl enable --now nta \
  && sudo systemctl restart nta \
  && sudo systemctl status nta

# check the status
sudo systemctl status nta

# view live logs
sudo journalctl -u nta -f