Show HN: Kraa.io – Markdown editor for notes, blogs, chats

23 comments

·May 21, 2025

Hi HN! Excited to share the public beta of Kraa – a web-based markdown editor.

It's aiming to be distraction-free and has strong separation of the document's styling from the experience of writing it — while still alowing for rich customization. Example of a leaf with custom styles: https://kraa.io/kraa/examples/echolibrary

Curious about your feedback in hopes of improving Kraa before the planned launch later this year.

Visit

mrweasel

What's the point of editors like this. It looks really well done, but it's not the first, and I don't see the point of any of them.

I don't get why I would need a web-based editor (markdown or other formats). I can perhaps see the point in a collaboration editor, but that's a special case.

Where's the "save" button? Where is my stuff stored? After clicking around a bit I got stuff in the edit mode and now I can't get back to the frontpage.

Perhaps this is an age thing, but files goes on my hard drive, I organise them using a file manager. Files shouldn't be stuck in a browser.

It says I can write blog posts, but how do I export files to my blog? Is there Wordpress integration? Git?

jm666

It is a collaborative document, saved live in a same way as google docs (with offline local support coming, if You are out of cell). The benefit is to have a simple way to create colab documents, with invite logic, which can be used for different purposes seamlessly - private notes, shared todo-lists, password protected gallery, read-only blog post, chat.

We will have markdown / keep / ... import of the notes, a bit later, but that is not probably what You meant with file uploads. The front-page navigation needs care, thx for feedback.

mrweasel

Thanks.

No the import of notes is not what I had in mind :-) I always want to be storing files locally, or on a network share. Having this being intended as a collaboration tool makes sense, but if I'm the sole user, then it's just another place to store my files, which can't be shared or accessed by any other tool. That's my objection, and why I question the usefulness of something like this. You're siloing of data, which makes no sense to me (well it doesn't, it's the only way this can really work in the browser).

My question about the usefulness is sincere. I truly don't get why anyone would want to work in the browser like this, but I also dislike Google Docs. I'm just not the target audience, so I struggle to see how or why something like this would be useful.

The functionality is really well done, I'd just wish it was a desktop application, and stored files on my hard drive.

jm666

Thank You too; I understand, I'm a long time vi & ripgrep user and honestly do not like wysiwyg editors too much; most of my private notes are still rsynced plaintext.

For me, the valuable usecases for kraa are: small notes shared accross devices/people (desktop/phone, family todos), pw-protected gallery for family, and the possibility to turn a note into a BS-free nice blog post super easily. The BS-free aspect is important, but it also means we will be compromising on features (compared to notion/wp/..).

EDIT (adding):

Also, as for the desktop application storing files localy - we do not plan that now, it is too much of a stretch from colab web app :-) We will however probably support localStorage offline mode & p2p / encrypted documents, but that is still something else.

Kind regards!

null

[deleted]

bertocast

I have been looking for something similar for a while. Thanks for this.

zeroq

Feedback: backlink is not working as expected, i've tried several times - initially i clicked on sth, clicked back and it got me to "private mode" (new leaf, search), when i tried again and clicked on a one of showcase links and the clicked back twice it brought me back to the "private mode" again, seems quite finicky.

EDIT: repro: seems like spa app tries to be smart about browser.history - just click random things and try to use back button

jm666

Thx, will fix!

frank20022

Looks nice, but what is the value proposition? Why this versus many other distraction free editors?

jm666

Thanks. I'd say: simple access control (== easy to invite friends, publish as blog, password-protect), flexible document structure & roles (todos, notes, chat, image board, ...), pretty great image gallery, visual styling separated from content (cleaner UX).

abdullahajmal

The website is cleannnn! Keep up the good work!

levmiseri

Here is a public leaf to showcase how chatting works with Kraa's unique 'writer' role: https://kraa.io/hackernews

GuillaumeAirGen

Looks nice! What tangible arguments do you have for me to switch from Notion to Kraa?

levmiseri

Kraa can't properly compete with Notion, yet. Not on the feature-set. That being said, if you value simpler interface that still has all the core editor features, give it a try!

We are also not trying to be a Notion clone/alternative, but rather a different kind of text editor that's highly customizable, has unique features (like the writer role) and keeps strong division between writing and styling.

voigt

Appears to me more like a super clean version of hack.md!

chrisvalleybay

Well – chatting in there sure was a fun experience! This gave off Google Wave vibes, back when it launched.

thestepafter

Just had a great conversation with multiple people, really like the concept displayed in the showcase.

yasir326

This is very clean and clutter free. I really like simplicity

patrick4urcloud

super application !

samsmithy

[flagged]

jm666

Thx. Documents have access control (so you can control who can see the docs / who can collaborate; private by default) and we are responsible, but the content is not end-to-end encrypted if that is what You are asking; we plan to introduce p2p documents and end-to-end encrypted stuff in time.