Show HN: Nomad Hypertext, a local first writing app built around semantic search

[nichwch]

Nomad Hypertext is a writing app built around semantic search. It lets you see connections between your ideas in real time as your write - click on the # symbol next to a paragraph, and similar ideas you've written about in the past will show in the sidebar. This helps you spot both recurring themes and unexpected links between seemingly different ideas.

It does this by generating embeddings using a local model (supabase's gte-small model) and finds similar posts with @OramaSearch, a local vector DB.

[nsriv]

I really like this concept, echoing what others have said. I'm an avid user of Pocket and tagging is wonderful, but auto-tagging and periodic surfacing is something I've wanted forever. Doing it at the note/db level is awesome

[nichwch]

I've started pasting blog posts I really like into Nomad Hypertext, which is cool because I can later see how things I write relate to blog posts I've written

[arinazari]

I really love this app/concept. I'm curious from your time working on the app what applications/use cases beyond note-taking you might have uncovered, that might not be obvious at first glance? (e.g. If studying a topic, creating a note of questions to quiz yourself from time to time, with the answers likely being found in semantic search.)

[nichwch]

Hm, I've found it much more useful for journaling and ideation than for notetaking (and I've found this to be true for other tools for thought like Roam/Obsidian as well).

I generally don't take notes when trying to learn something, I usually like to be more hands on (by doing problems, making a project applying the principles, etc.) When I write it's usually to reflect, or to hash out a more open ended problem.

[denali53]

This looks hella cool. Let me ask you - could you use this (or the sister project I see, Yurt) to upload a novel, or some large block of text and follow that around. Eg... take Moby Dick from gutenberg and follow each paragraph around?

[nichwch]

Yes, you could!

I tried doing this with Yurt to deploy the first chapter of Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan: https://themediumisthemessage.nicholaschen.io/posts/about.tx...

The main challenges are chunking the text so that the paragraphs actually encapsulate a concrete idea, so that the connections between them are valuable.

[jamager]

Nice! This seems a great way to kill the need for bidirectional links between notes (for some use cases, at least).