Vault

A note-taking desktop app with rich text, spreadsheets, lists, AI chat, voice recordings, and more. Fully modular, with global hotkeys for quick capture. Your data stays on your machine — no account, no subscription.

Note

To install, grab the latest .exe from the Releases tab on the right and run it.

Windows may show a SmartScreen warning because the app isn't code-signed. Click "More info" → "Run anyway" to proceed. The app is fully open-source — you can inspect every line of code in this repo.

Why

I built Vault because I was unsatisfied with existing apps. One app had features another didn’t, workflows were fragmented, and AI was often locked behind premium pricing. I wanted one place that covered my real daily workflow without subscriptions deciding what I could or couldn’t do.

I also wanted total control, so Vault is local-first by design: everything is stored in a local SQLite database on your machine, AI uses your own API key, and voice transcription runs through your own Azure Speech credentials. Due to popular demand, I open-sourced it and modularized it so users can bend it to their own will.

Features

Notes

• Hierarchical pages with drag-and-drop reordering
• Rich text editing, custom icons, archive, and full-text search
• Note deep links — paste @mention-style clickable references between notes
• Pop-out notes into separate resizable windows
• Inline voice recordings via /voice slash command
• Inline emoji picker (/emoji) with ~500 searchable emojis
• Inline icon insertion (/icon) with searchable custom icons
• Native spellcheck with right-click suggestions and Add to Dictionary

Spreadsheets

• Spreadsheet notes with inline editing and formatting
• Resizable grid with optional AI help in context

Lists

• Quick-access list items with optional links and tags
• Tag-based filtering and search

AI Chat

• Multi-session chat with auto-generated titles
• OpenRouter and Azure Foundry integration, streaming responses, image support, and custom instructions
• Context-aware in-note and global modes
• Blur/scramble chat history titles for privacy

Quick Windows (Global Hotkeys)

• Ctrl+Q — floating Quick Note window, saves to your notes with AI-generated title
• Ctrl+Space — floating Quick AI window for instant queries without opening the full app

Search

• Full-text search across notes and lists
• Filter by Notes, Lists, and toggle Include Archived

Other

• Fully modular — enable or disable any feature (Notes, Lists, AI Chat, File Cleaner) from Settings
• Teams call transcription that auto-transcribes and summarises calls, saved as notes
• File Cleaner with Tinder-style swipe interface for cleaning up files on your machine
• One-click export of all data (notes, lists, audio, icons) as a zip

Tech Stack

Layer	Tech
Desktop shell	Electron 29
Frontend	Next.js 16 (App Router, Turbopack), React 19, Tailwind CSS 4
Backend	Next.js API Routes, Prisma ORM
Database	SQLite via Prisma
AI (cloud)	OpenRouter or Azure Foundry (user-supplied key)
Transcription (cloud)	Azure Speech live transcription (user-supplied key)

Data Storage

All user data lives in:

OS	Path
Windows	%APPDATA%\Vault\data\

This folder contains:

• mothership.db — the SQLite database (notes, lists, chat history, settings)
• icons/ — custom note icons
• audio/ — voice recordings
• .trash/ — stores the last deleted file to power the undo system (before final empty)

Data persists independently of the app installation, so reinstalling or updating doesn't touch it.

Local Development

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+
• npm

Setup

# 1. Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/vault.git
cd vault

# 2. Install dependencies
npm install

# 3. Generate Prisma client
npx prisma generate

Run in browser (Next.js dev mode)

npm run dev

Opens at http://localhost:3000. Good for UI work — no Electron overhead.

Run in Electron (dev mode)

npm run electron:dev

Starts the Next.js dev server and Electron together.

Building & Installing

Install to your machine (one command)

npm run install:local

This will:

1. Kill any running Vault instance
2. Rebuild native modules for Node.js
3. Build Next.js for production
4. Rebuild native modules for Electron
5. Package with electron-packager
6. Install to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Vault

Package only

npm run package

Output goes to dist/Vault-win32-x64/.

Bump version + push tag (one command)

npm run version:push -- patch

You can use patch, minor, major, or an explicit version like:

npm run version:push -- 0.2.0

Or keep the bump type first and set an explicit version last:

npm run version:push -- patch --version 0.2.0

This command updates package.json (and package-lock.json if present), creates a release commit, creates the matching vX.Y.Z tag, and pushes both to GitHub.

Contributing

PRs and issues are welcome. This is a personal project so I may be opinionated about direction, but if you've found a bug or have a genuinely useful idea, open an issue and let's talk.

If you're adding a feature, open an issue first so we're aligned before you put in the work.

License

CC BY-NC 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International)