Up front, I haven't even downloaded this app, so this is in no way a recommendation. But we've been listing a lot of new writing apps here, so I thought I'd mention this one:

https://panossakalakis.com/the-novelist/

The free version appears fairly robust. The Pro version is $45 per year.

I probably won't even give this a trial, because I've found that I do not like the apps that have such busy screens.

Hey, I'm the developer of the app, thanks for sharing it!

If you happen to give it a try, the app uses plugins for almost all of its features, meaning that you can disable all the options you don't like or use and keep things clean and minimal. Both navigation menus can also be minimized, and the main (left) navigation supports drag-and-drop, so you can have every option in the order that best fits your personal preferences.

Thanks again for sharing! :)

Simple is good.

Here's something I found this morning, an Obsidian based writing system - https://www.easonblackwood.com/ebwriter?utm_source=webiste&utm_medium=organic_search&utm_campaign=eb_writer&utm_content=projects

Like Stephen, I'm not a potential customer. At the risk of sounding like I've found a cure for CRIMPing, I'm extremely happy with Mellel plus a note-taking system. Devonthink, Obsidian, or The Archive. Those systems vary wildly in features and flexibility, but I've found that almost anything will do for story notes as long as I can find the notes I need. At most I've had a couple of hundred notes for a document or story. It's not that big a haystack.

We dedicated CRIMPers will brook no cure! Onward to the next download.

Indeed! Well said, Paul! Taran-tara!

Actually, there are already a f***ton of Obsidian-based writing systems, most of them free. But this one looks Very Serious.

As for Novelist: very nice! And yet another really good-looking website! Are these AI-generated, by any chance? Or are a bunch of really competent developers also discovering their design chops?

I haven't played with Novelist "in anger" yet, but I'll be doing so!

Paul Korm wrote:

We dedicated CRIMPers will brook no cure! Onward to the next download.

MadaboutDana wrote:

As for Novelist: very nice! And yet another really good-looking website! Are these AI-generated, by any chance? Or are a bunch of really competent developers also discovering their design chops?

I've used tons of LLMs (local and cloud) to help, but since I don't trust them even a bit, I read every single line of code, make adjustments myself, and a lot of times I just write the base code and then give it to an LLM to fill out the gaps. That's why it took me two years to finally release the early access version, and thus why it takes time to push new updates. Claude, Codex, Cursor, used them all by now, and I'll tell you what every developer/programmer will: they often generate shitty code, and most of the time I have to manually rewrite a lot of it.

That's interesting — my daughter-in-law, who's a senior software engineer working for a formerly open-source company that's been very successful and now, for utterly spurious reasons, decided to base pretty much everything they do on AI, says exactly the same thing. She appreciates AI as a support tool, but finds the gap between what some middle-manager colleague of hers manages to produce and present to the C-suite (who then get frightfully excited) and the **real** code required to create what the middle manager has essentially mocked up is enormous. Particularly since she's a security specialist, and you just can't accept compromises in security. But security is, after all, important to all developers.

Interestingly, a lot of the OS developers at the Open Source Conference also use AI in much the same way you do. The trustless approach seems to be a common factor, too ;-)

Panos Sakalakis wrote:

I've used tons of LLMs (local and cloud) to help, but since I don't trust them even a bit, I read every single line of code, make adjustments myself, and a lot of times I just write the base code and then give it to an LLM to fill out the gaps. That's why it took me two years to finally release the early access version, and thus why it takes time to push new updates. Claude, Codex, Cursor, used them all by now, and I'll tell you what every developer/programmer will: they often generate shitty code, and most of the time I have to manually rewrite a lot of it.

MadaboutDana wrote:

you just can't accept compromises in security. But security is, after all, important to all developers.

Indeed! Security must be bottom-up. If you can't trust the components, it's hard to trust the whole.