01 / MARKDOWN EDITOR
AMPERSAND
Most writing apps hold your notes hostage in their own format and their own cloud. Ampersand keeps every document as plain Markdown on the Mac — nothing to sync, nothing to lock in.
- OUTCOME
- A native editor with block-based editing, a saved version of every change, and an AI draft that stays in the margin until asked for. Exports to clean PDF and Word; the source stays plain .md you can still open in twenty years.
- STACK
- Tauri · Rust · React
- Plain files, not a database
- The format decision came first and everything followed from it. Documents are .md files in a folder you choose, written directly to disk — not rows in an application database that happens to export Markdown. The practical test is whether the app is optional: delete Ampersand and the work is still there, still readable, still editable in anything else.
- Versions without a server
- Every change is kept, and none of it leaves the machine. History is a local concern rather than a sync feature, which removes the usual tradeoff between keeping a record and handing your drafts to someone else's infrastructure. Restoring an earlier state is a local read, so it works on a plane.
- AI that stays in the margin
- The draft assistant is deliberately adjacent rather than inline. It does not rewrite the document, autocomplete into it, or act until asked — the writing surface stays the writer's. Making AI opt-in per invocation is a smaller feature than making it ambient, and a much easier one to trust.
- PLATFORM
- macOS 13+
- FORMAT
- PLAIN .MD
- EXPORT
- PDF · DOCX