Drafta 1.5: Mermaid on Pele and synchronization without a button
Drafta 1.5 draws Mermaid diagrams with a single Pele renderer and picks up changes from the server on its own within seconds — without a "Synchronize" button.
Blog
Notes from building Drafta.
Releases, design decisions and how the app works inside — written in Drafta and published straight from it.
RSS feedDrafta 1.4: knowledge exchange in OKF format and Ctrl-w in vim
Drafta 1.4 reads and writes Open Knowledge Format, serves it to agents via MCP, teaches vim mode to switch between panes with Ctrl-w, and fixes double prefixes in quick search.
Emoji in Drafta: colon instead of a palette
How to insert emoji into Drafta from the keyboard: a colon and a couple of letters of the name, like on GitHub. The note keeps the symbol itself, not the code.
Drafta 1.2.4: swipe and wide tables
In Drafta 1.2.4, horizontal scrolling of a wide table no longer collapses the sidebar: the swipe for panels only triggers when there is nothing left to scroll.
Drafta 1.2.2: clean previews and a theme-matched icon
In Drafta 1.2.2, note previews in the list became plain text without Markdown formatting, and the app icon changes with the light and dark themes of macOS.
Drafta 1.2: local models, model selection, and calculator
Drafta 1.2 connects local models via LM Studio and Ollama, lets you choose a model for each provider, adds OpenCode Zen and a built-in calculator.
Drafta 1.1.1: nested tags
In Drafta 1.1.1, a parent/child tag became a single tag, a tag tree appeared in the sidebar, and tags no longer move notes between notebooks.
Drafta 1.1: into five thousand notes without delays
Drafta 1.1 on speed: autosave in 7 ms, search in milliseconds, launch in fractions of a second, switching notes without reloading the editor.
Drafta 1.0 has been released
Drafta 1.0 — a native Markdown editor for programmers on macOS. What's in the release, who it's for, how much it costs, and what's next.
Drafta Editor: Markdown, preview, and split
How the Drafta editor works: CodeMirror 6, three view modes, live Mermaid and KaTeX preview, callouts, table of contents, and note statistics.
Notes are files: notebooks, tags, statuses, and links
How Drafta stores and organizes notes: Markdown files with YAML front-matter, nested notebooks, tags, four statuses, bookmarks, and a link graph.
Typing from the keyboard: shortcuts, snippets, autocorrect
Drafta hotkeys, quick navigation with ⌘P, slash snippets, and auto-replacements while typing — everything that keeps you from reaching for the mouse.
Revision history and backups
How Drafta stores up to 30 revisions of each note with diff and one-click rollback and how it backs up the entire library to ZIP.
Synchronization and encryption in Drafta
How Drafta syncs notes via the cloud or its own CouchDB, encrypts them with AES-256-GCM on your Mac, and why the account has two passwords.
AI assistant in Drafta: ⌘J and your key
How the Drafta AI assistant works: a popover via ⌘J, seven ready-made commands, editing a selection and inserting at the cursor, Anthropic, OpenAI, or DeepSeek keys.
MCP server Drafta: agents read and write notes
Drafta's built-in MCP server gives Claude and other clients 12 tools for the entire library. How to connect, what it can do, and how to restrict it to read-only.
What Drafta looks like: themes, typography, export
Eleven built-in Drafta themes and custom themes in JSON, four typography presets, and export to PDF, DOCX, HTML, and Markdown via styling profiles.