Inspired by Sacha's and Christian's work on implementing a zettelkasten, I searched for the perfect technological implementation for my own web of knowledge. Not being able to find a good fit, my friend and I started working on an application to scratch our own itches. Fast forward half a year: I'm happy to say that we've just launched Contexted.

It is aimed to be a text-first personal knowledge manager, with the focus on building a Wiki-style web of knowledge. It supports Markdown autoformatting, mindmap visualizations and a really frictionless way to connect notes.

https://contexted.io/

First and foremost: I am really curious about the feedback you might have. What do you think of the concept, the user experience, and the current features? What would you like to see? Thanks in advance.

Niek, just a couple of comments based on a very quick look, so forgive me if I've missed something, but ...

- I don't see any mention anywhere of platform. I guess this is probably a web-based online thing - it would be useful if that was mentioned somewhere. Related to that, you mention daily backups - if it's online, backups from where to where? If it's backups from offline, what's the platform?

- Nowhere that I can see do you provide any information about who you are or where you are based. If this is an online thing, people need to know to whom their data is being trusted and where they are. I think you'd get a better reaction if you opened up about that.

Otherwise, good luck with this!

Graham

Niek,

I've created an account and made a few pages. My initial reaction is that I am impressed.

I like the clean, uncluttered look. It is easy to create new pages in the wiki and write content. The mindmap view is handy and clever. And the breadcrumb bar is a nice touch.

For Contexted (I like the name, too) to be useful to me, I will need a way to print and export pages.

I agree with Graham that some more details about who you are and how the data is being handled would help people feel they can trust their content with you.

Thanks for your work and for sharing it. I'll let you know if other thoughts occur to me.

Steve Z

Nick, thank you for taking the initiative to build Contexted. It looks nice. I don't want to try it, however.

The first thing I look for in any web app is the privacy policy and information about encryption (in flight and at rest), backup, offline access, etc. Free is nice, but for me "free" is a red flag that says this might be a hobby build that will vanish one day without a trace.

Where is it hosted?

Apart from the red flags because there's nothing posted about security policy and practices, is that Contexted looks like it would fill a small subsection of TheBrain, which I'm heavily invested in.

Reminds me, too, of Kumo -- which is pretty far along the maturity curve already:

https://kumu.io

Hi Niek,
I am impressed from a quick skim, well done!

The main problem of using a text-based format is that you need a way to represent links. I am glad that you use UUIDs to assign the links so it won't break if a note title changed. However, when exporting to Markdown format, the links are not persisted (I mean, I can't click on the links now to the targeted note). I would recommend the export format to be compatible to The Archive, which ensure "no vendor locks".

So I went back into my Contexted account this morning and the few pages I had created were gone and the site was back to how it looked when I first started it. Has anyone else experienced this?

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Niek,

I've created an account and made a few pages. My initial reaction is
that I am impressed.

I like the clean, uncluttered look. It is easy to create new pages in
the wiki and write content. The mindmap view is handy and clever. And
the breadcrumb bar is a nice touch.

For Contexted (I like the name, too) to be useful to me, I will need a
way to print and export pages.

I agree with Graham that some more details about who you are and how the
data is being handled would help people feel they can trust their
content with you.

Thanks for your work and for sharing it. I'll let you know if other
thoughts occur to me.

Steve Z

I'm always leery of software promoted as "free forever". I get that you're using it as a hook to bait customers into paying for your "value-added" deal, but "nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky" (thanks, Kansas).

I'd rather pay a fair sum for good, useful software. "Free forever" isn't sustainable.

PS. You might want to reconsider your tagline "The #1 text-first personal knowledge manager". It's only been around for a couple of weeks...

For whoever is interested: we launched a major update on the app. I would really appreciate any feedback you might have.

http://contexted.io

I didn't see anything on the website about import, export or backups. It looks like a nice notes wiki with intricate plumbing hidden away and some interesting features (eg ZenKit-like multiple views). It looks like a really nice start, but none of the earlier objections from the thread were addressed, like who the company is, what the roadmap is, what is the privacy policy, and of course what is the future of the app in terms of pricing.

I would not support a developer, or buy software from a developer, who solicits feedback and then does not respond to it or even acknowledge it, but does come back here to advertise his software again.

It looks lovely.

But I no longer use web-only apps for a wide variety of solid reasons!

Are you thinking of producing a desktop/mobile version?