Dendron

The hierarchical note taking tool that grows as you do.

Dendron is an open-source, local-first, markdown-based, note-taking tool built on top of VSCode. Like most such tools, Dendron supports all the usual features you would expect like tagging, backlinks, a graph view, split panes, and so forth. But it doesn’t stop there - whereas most tools (try to make it) easy to get notes in, they tend to make it hard to get them back out later, and it only gets worse as you add more notes. Dendron helps you get notes back out and works better the more notes you have.

I originally created Dendron because I’d accumulated over 20k notes on programming and various other topics and couldn’t find a tool that would let me easily add and find notes from within my knowledge base.

Traditional note-taking tools are often too rigid by having an in-flexible hierarchy that doesn’t let you file a note in multiple places. Newer tools are too flexible by eschewing hierarchies altogether in favour of relying solely on backlinks.

Dendron finds the usable center between the two extremes by supporting the linking of any two arbitrary notes through backlinks while also maintaining a canonical hierarchy for every note. We do this through a form of structured note-taking that relies on the combination of hierarchies, schemas, and path based lookups. Read our quickstart to learn about the details.

You can use Dendron to create, organize, and publish all the information that matters to you.

Use Cases

Whether you organize your notes with PARA or Zettelkasten, link notes together like Roam, or simply create notes in an ad-hoc manner, Dendron can help.

Think of it as a second brain to help you make sense of all the information you care about.

Some popular use cases include:

• project management
• personal knowledge base of things you’ve learned
• CRM to keep track of clients, friends and enemies
• recipe book

Join Us

To stay up to date on Dendron developments and all things knowledge management, you can follow us at @dendronhq or join us on discord!

Features

See our core features that help you manage your notes.

Getting Started

To get started, you can follow the instructions in quickstart.

Motvation

“We are overwhelmed with information and we don’t have the tools to properly index and filter through it. [The development of these tools, which] will give society access to and command over the inherited knowledge of the ages [should] be the first objective of our scientist” - Vannevar Bush, 1945

You Are Here

This project is about 1% complete, both in the sense that it is in preview but also that there’s so much more to build. The north star of this project is to achieve Vannevar Bush’s original vision - to build a tool of thought that can give humanity “access to and command over the inherited knowledge of the ages“.

If you are reading this, you too, are now part of the journey. Let’s take back control of our information and use it to build something better, together!

FAQ

See the FAQ for answers for common questions.

Contributing

We welcome community contributions and pull requests. See CONTRIBUTING for information on how to set up a development environment and submit code.

License

Dendron is distributed under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3.

See LICENSE and NOTICE for more information.