Open source project Sep 2026 – present

Notely

Creator and developer

Native sticky notes app for macOS, with checklists, Markdown descriptions and GitHub issue sync.

The story

It was a really fun and rewarding project to build: it started as a tool for my own Mac and became my lab for learning native development.

01 I built it with Spec-Driven Development using OpenSpec: every feature starts as a spec, and the code and tests come from it.
02 I designed a modular Swift Package Manager architecture, splitting domain, persistence, integrations and UI into separate targets.
03 I built floating windows with AppKit and SwiftUI that remember text, size and position across sessions, with text formatting, per-note colors and animations.
04 Persistence was migrated to SQLite with a custom migration system and its own test suite.
05 I integrated the GitHub API to sync notes with issues, storing the token securely in the macOS Keychain.
06 I added link detection with preview cards and a hand-written Markdown parser.