HACKER Q&A
📣 sawaruna

Preferred VSCode-based note taking app?


Recently, a few VSCode-based markdown note taking / knowledge base apps have been released, namely Foam[0], Dendron[1], and Memo[2]. Discussions in the below linked HN thread are useful, but I'm wondering if anyone has tried multiple of these apps and what they ended up settling with & why.

I'm using Foam right now and enjoy it. Not looking to really 'distro-hop' between note taking apps all the time, but curious about others' thoughts.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23666950

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23890035

[2] https://github.com/svsool/vscode-memo

  👤 kevinslin Accepted Answer ✓
I think each solution brings something different to the table. I've tried Foam but not Memo and here are my thoughts (disclaimer: I'm the author of Dendron so have some bias here)

0. foam pieces together a bunch of different plugins to create a markdown note taking experience. it's highly flexible and as the creator has said (https://github.com/svsool/vscode-memo/issues/9#issuecomment-...), is currently a testing ground for many different ideas.

1. dendron is a highly opinonated note taking tool that focuses on "structured note taking". it supports arbitrary links between notes while also organizing notes into canonical hierarchies. these hierarchies can be enforced by schemas, an optional type system for notes, that guide what notes hierarchies accept. dendron is all about letting you work with notes at scale - I created it to handle my personal knowledge base of 20k markdown notes.

2. memo i've never heard of until now. it seems like it provides a 'roam' like experience inside vscode. the gifs look great and will definitely play around with it.

👤 archyking
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