Inspiration
Traditional note-taking apps with AI features require sending your data to external servers, requiring internet connectivity and essentially raising privacy concerns. Their database layer is also almost always hosted on a 3rd party provider. I want my notes completely to myself.
What it does
Notester solves this by:
- Privacy-First: All AI processing happens locally using Chrome's Built-in AI.
- No External Databases: Notes are stored in your browser's IndexedDB using PGlite. They're not stored on any third-party database.
- Offline-Capable: Works without an internet connection
- Cost-Free: No API costs or quotas - unlimited AI usage
- Multimodal Input: Generate notes from images, PDFs, and audio files without uploading them anywhere
AI Features (Prompt & Translator API):
- Create notes from scratch with AI assistance
- Enhance writing quality and clarity
- Correct spelling and grammatical errors
- Translate text
- Real-time AI auto-completion while writing
- Upload PDF files for note creation
- Upload images to generate notes from visual content (handwritten notes)
- Upload audio files to be transcribed into notes
- Chat with an AI assistant about your note and let it search the web & edit it
How we built it
Notester is built in React with Nextjs as the framework. It uses TipTap editor components for the note editor as well as a PGlite (PostgreSQL in the browser) database.
Challenges we ran into
Navigating the different new APIs. Even though there are quite a few to chose from based on the task at hand, I think it was essential to also factor in the user experience (UX). Using the Prompt API for most of the tasks actually seemed like providing a better overall experience (latency wise).
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Tool calling that enables the AI model to edit the user's notes. I think that a 4B parameter model being capable of that is quite awesome. I also really like how fast and snappy the application feels. Good for quick note-taking.
What we learned
A ton about how well smaller language models excels at smaller challenges such as text-editing. I really find it fascinating that the overall experience with Gemini Nano and a larger model in an application like this is pretty similar.
What's next for Notester
We'd like to refine and adjust some of the system prompts, add a toggle to use a larger model (especially for mobile devices) and overall just make the experience better.
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