NeverWrite

Important note about Claude subscription usage in NeverWrite starting June 15, 2026

• Update: Claude delayed their decision, you can continue to use claude native integration inside NeverWrite. More info in the linked discussion.

---

NeverWrite is a local-first knowledge workspace for people who need to handle workflows with multiple parallel agents and subagents. Built like a code editor, but for markdown. It has inline review changes, like Cursor and others. Please help me test it!

Today the repository combines:

• An Electron desktop app with a Rust sidecar that opens a local vault and keeps working state on disk.
• A Markdown, CSV, and text/code editing workflow with wikilinks, live preview, frontmatter editing, spellcheck, and grammar checking.
• Knowledge navigation tools such as backlinks, tags, advanced search, bookmarks, concept maps, and a 2D/3D graph view.
• An ACP-based AI layer with Codex, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Kilo, and OpenCode runtimes.
• An explicit AI change-review system with inline review inside the editor and a dedicated surface in chat and a tab with changes pending approval.
• A separate browser web clipper that can save directly into the desktop app through a local API, with deep-link fallback. Compatible with both Firefox and Chromium.

What NeverWrite Is Today

The current product already includes:

• Local vault opening with progress reporting, persisted snapshots, filesystem watching, and incremental re-sync
• A desktop workspace with tabs, sidebars, command palette, quick switcher, detached windows, and first-class terminal tabs
• Native-feeling editing for Markdown notes, CSV files, PDFs, images, HTML previews, and generic text/code files
• Embedded Excalidraw-based concept maps stored as .excalidraw files in the vault. The map format is visible and editable by agents.
• A graph view with global, local, and overview modes plus 2D and 3D rendering
• AI chat sessions with attachments from the vault, slash commands, transcript persistence, and runtime-specific capabilities
• A real AI review pipeline so generated edits are not silently committed

Saved AI conversations are stored locally under each vault's hidden .neverwrite/sessions/ directory. See AI session history and crash recovery for the disk layout and recovery flow. NeverWrite also writes local diagnostic logs under the app data logs/ directory; see App logs for platform-specific paths and privacy notes.

Why It Is Different

• AI edits stay reviewable through an accumulated action log, inline controls, and a dedicated review tab. It is much more than a chat.
• The desktop app is not limited to Markdown notes; it already handles CSV files, PDFs, images, text/code files, and maps in the same workspace.
• It features a best-in-class multipane experience that lets the user parallelize multiple lines of work with agents while simultaneously reading and editing documents in the same window.
• The web clipper allows saving web articles quickly, securely, and efficiently.

Current Capabilities

Vault and workspace

• Open, index, and watch a local vault.
• Recent vaults, pinned vaults, reopen-last-vault behavior
• File tree with drag and drop, multi-selection, sorting, and context actions
• File tree modes for curated writing/media files, all vault files, or an explicit extension allowlist
• Persistent bookmarks per vault
• Persistent tabs and window session restore
• Detached note windows and separate vault windows
• First-class terminal tabs with themed xterm rendering, persistent workspace state, search, and Claude Code integration in the Agents sidebar

Editing and reading

• Markdown editing with CodeMirror 6
• Optional Vim key bindings for modal editing, with Vim-style ex commands and relative line numbers
• Wikilink suggestions, resolution, and navigation
• Live preview with tasks, tables, embeds, math, and YouTube previews
• Frontmatter/properties editing
• CSV editing with table and raw fallback views
• Editable text/code files with syntax highlighting and autosave
• Sandboxed in-app HTML viewing for .html and .htm files
• PDF viewing with visual filters
• Internal image viewing with fit and zoom
• App-owned Hunspell-based spellcheck with bundled en-US and es-ES
• Grammar/style checks through LanguageTool

Knowledge navigation

• Backlinks and outgoing links
• Tags extracted from content and frontmatter
• Advanced search with query builder, regex, negation, OR, and property filters
• Graph view in 2D and 3D
• Concept maps in .excalidraw

AI and change control

• ACP runtime integration for Codex, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Kilo, and OpenCode
• Attachment flows for notes, folders, files, PDFs, audio, images, and screenshots
• Session history, transcript viewing, session export, fork, resume, and rename flows
• Crash recovery for saved chats through Chat History and local .neverwrite/sessions/ transcripts
• File-based app diagnostics for Electron, renderer, and native backend logs
• Inline review inside the editor when the tracked file has a reliable base
• A dedicated Review tab plus an Edits surface for keep/reject workflows
• Rust/WASM-backed diffing and change tracking

Web clipper

• Dedicated browser extension in apps/web-clipper
• Full page, selection, and URL-only clipping modes
• Markdown preview before save
• Template system with vault and domain scoping
• Local clip history
• Direct desktop save through http://127.0.0.1:32145/api/web-clipper
• Deep-link fallback when the desktop API is unavailable

Monorepo Layout

apps/
  desktop/          Main Electron + React desktop application
  web-clipper/      Browser extension built with WXT + React

crates/
  ai/               Shared AI domain types
  diff/             Rust diff engine, plus WASM bindings for review flows
  index/            Vault indexing, link resolution, and search primitives
  types/            Shared DTOs and domain models
  vault/            Vault scanning, parsing, filesystem watching, and PDF discovery

Stack

• Desktop shell: Electron 41, React 19, TypeScript 6, Vite 8, Tailwind CSS 4, CodeMirror 6, Excalidraw, PDF.js, electron-updater
• Desktop native backend: Rust 2021, Tokio, notify, portable-pty, reqwest, spellbook, app-owned spellcheck runtime
• Desktop main process: Electron IPC plus a Node HTTP server for the local web clipper API
• Shared Rust crates: vault parsing, indexing, search, diff, DTOs
• Browser extension: WXT, React, TypeScript, Chrome MV3 and Firefox MV3 targets

Development

Important: there is no top-level JavaScript workspace package. JavaScript dependencies are installed per app.

Requirements

• Rust and Cargo
• Node.js 22+ and npm for apps/desktop and JavaScript tooling
• pnpm for apps/web-clipper (packageManager is pinned to pnpm@10.33.0)

CI and release workflows are pinned to Node.js 22, so local development should use Node 22 or newer.

Desktop app

cd apps/desktop
npm install
npm run dev

That starts the Electron desktop app plus the local renderer dev server.

If you only need the renderer dev server:

cd apps/desktop
npm run renderer:dev

Web clipper

cd apps/web-clipper
pnpm install
pnpm dev

Build unpacked extension artifacts:

cd apps/web-clipper
pnpm build

This produces:

• apps/web-clipper/dist/chrome-mv3/
• apps/web-clipper/dist/firefox-mv3/

Rust workspace

cargo test

Validation

Desktop frontend tests:

cd apps/desktop
npm test

Web clipper validation:

cd apps/web-clipper
pnpm check

Rust workspace tests:

cargo test

The repository already contains broad Vitest coverage in the desktop app and web clipper, plus Rust integration tests for vault and index behavior.

AI Runtime Notes

NeverWrite currently wires six ACP runtimes:

• codex-acp
• claude-acp
• gemini-acp
• grok
• kilo-acp
• opencode-acp

Current packaging status:

• Codex is intended to be bundled as a sidecar binary in desktop release builds.
• Claude is intended to be bundled through an embedded Node runtime plus vendored runtime files.
• Gemini is integrated in the app, but not bundled by default today.
• Grok is integrated in the app, but not bundled by default today.
• Kilo is integrated in the app, but not bundled by default today.
• OpenCode is integrated in the app, but not bundled by default today.

Useful runtime overrides during development:

• NEVERWRITE_CODEX_ACP_BIN
• NEVERWRITE_CLAUDE_ACP_BIN
• NEVERWRITE_GEMINI_ACP_BIN
• NEVERWRITE_GROK_ACP_BIN
• NEVERWRITE_KILO_ACP_BIN
• NEVERWRITE_OPENCODE_ACP_BIN

For release builds, see apps/desktop/scripts/stage-electron-sidecar.mjs and release/appcast/README.md.

Web Clipper Notes

The web clipper talks to the desktop app through a local HTTP API on port 32145.

When developing against an unpacked extension build, the desktop app blocks arbitrary extension origins by default. To explicitly allow a local extension origin, start the desktop app with:

cd apps/desktop
NEVERWRITE_WEB_CLIPPER_DEV_ORIGINS="chrome-extension://<dev-id>,moz-extension://<dev-id>" npm run dev

Use exact origins only. Wildcards are intentionally unsupported.

Project Status

NeverWrite is in a polish and hardening phase. Core systems already exist, but the project is still pre-1.0, in the process of resolving edge cases — help me find them!!

The areas with the highest product sensitivity right now are:

• AI review and change control
• Inline review and merge behavior
• Session persistence and multi-window workflows
• Desktop-to-clipper integration
• Using the 3D graph on large vaults has memory leaks; after using it, prefer restarting the application.

License

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE.