Show HN: DailyNote – one-note-per-day app with local-first encryption

[katspaugh]

Hi HN and Happy New Year!

I built DailyNote, a minimalist daily notes app: one note per day, a year-at-a-glance calendar, and local-first storage.

The interesting bit is the encryption + sync model:

  - Notes are always encrypted locally before syncing to Supabase.
  - A dedicated data key (DEK) encrypts notes; your password only wraps that DEK (KEK).
  - So when you change your password, it just re-wraps the DEK — no re-encryption of note data.

I built the whole project in one day using Claude + Codex with a spec‑driven approach (tight PRD → implementation). It’s React/TypeScript, IndexedDB for local persistence, and optional cloud sync.

Demo: https://dailynote.xyz/

Repo: https://github.com/katspaugh/dailynote

Would love feedback on the crypto model, UX, or anything else.

[jannesblobel]

Nice project! I’m always interested in new note‑takers because I haven’t found one that really fits my workflow yet.

As @_mig5 mentioned, having version control with history tracking would be amazing — and an agent mode could be really cool too.

[katspaugh]

Thank you! Great idea about revisions, will definitely add this!

Regarding AI, I was thinking about this as well. Perhaps for feedback/reflection on your notes, or to summarize longer periods and look for behaviorial patterns over weeks/months/years. What would you implement an agent mode for?

[jannesblobel]

Please excuse the late reply; notifications at HN could be significantly better.

For example, for writing a blog post, if I only want to write down notes, meeting notes, etc.

[_mig5]

Really nice work! Seems super clean and efficient.

I don't want to do a 'look at my tool, it's better' comment (it's not better!) - but per your request for feedback, I just wanted to mention a (sort of) similar project I've been recently working on: https://git.mig5.net/mig5/bouquin, and it might give you some ideas for taking yours further:

Some similarities:

- 'one note per day' design

- days with notes have a visual 'marker' in the calendar

- full encryption at rest

But there are some big differences:

- It's a Qt GUI app (not web based, no syncing)

- It does a lot of other things (document storage, time logging, invoicing etc)

I mention it only because I implemented a few things based on feedback for my own app, that I could see would be useful in yours! Those suggestions are:

- Live markdown syntax (I couldn't use # or * or other Markdown symbols in your app, and that's a pretty popular option, for formatting)

- Version control of notes (in Bouquin, every change auto-saves and there is a sort of 'git diff' version interface that allows reverting to an earlier version)

- Tagging and search

- Perhaps support images

- Code blocks (this is kind of the same as the markdown idea, but syntax highlighting would be a huge win)

One other rather obscure bit of feedback I got for my app, was for people who use it as a 'TODO' planner: for items that were left 'unchecked' (incomplete) at the end of the day, I managed to make it move those items automatically to the next day, to help carry across unfinished work. I was sceptical at first, but it surprisingly useful once implemented!

Anyway, well done! Looking forward to seeing what comes next!

[katspaugh]

Awesome, thanks so much!

Bouquin looks like a very comprehensive tool, I'll give it a deeper look!

And I will definitely work on those improvements, they seem like must-haves w/o compromizing the minimalist approach I took.

Thanks again and all the best!