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About Odinote

A free, open-source visual workspace, built by one person who needed it to exist.

Why Odinote exists

Odinote started as a personal frustration. Visual canvas tools are wonderful for planning games, novels and creative projects — but the popular ones lock the features that matter behind subscriptions, cap how many cards you can create, or keep your data hostage in their cloud. As an indie game development student organizing design documents, art references and task boards, I wanted a tool that was spatial, recursive and mine. So I built it.

Odinote is the result: an infinite canvas where boards nest inside boards, so a whole game project — pitch, mechanics, art direction, roadmap — lives in one place without artificial limits.

The three promises

  • Free forever. No trials, no premium tier, no card limit. If a feature exists, everyone has it. Development is supported entirely by voluntary donations through Ko-fi — no ads, ever, anywhere.
  • Open source. The complete source code is on GitHub under the MIT license. Anyone can audit it, fork it, or compile their own build.
  • Local-first. Your data is stored on your machine by default. Cloud sync is optional and goes through your own Google Drive, not through servers we control. There is no account wall between you and your notes.

Technology

The desktop app is built with Electron and React and runs fully offline; the web version is the same code served as a static site. Google Drive integration uses Google's official APIs from your device, and sign-in uses Google via Firebase Authentication — accounts only, no note content ever touches Firebase or any project server.

Credits and licenses

  • Odinote — MIT License, © 2026 Jose Manuel Arango (Neuroxcx1).
  • Fluent Emoji project icons — © Microsoft, MIT License.
  • Material Symbols interface icons — Apache License 2.0.
  • Bricolage Grotesque, Geist and JetBrains Mono typefaces — SIL Open Font License.

Roadmap

Current priorities, in the open like everything else: smarter connector routing, richer real-time collaboration on shared workspaces, a template gallery, and packaged builds for more platforms. Progress and discussion happen publicly on the GitHub discussions board — feature requests are genuinely read and often shipped.

How you can help

  • Use the app and report anything that feels wrong — bug reports are gold.
  • Star or fork the project on GitHub, or contribute code and translations.
  • Tell one person who still plans their projects in a thousand scattered files.
  • If Odinote saves you time, a coffee on Ko-fi keeps the lights on.