#55 Found

Our solution allows for one click plain text backups and can be ran on any server. Companies like Notion pledge not to sell data, they could change their policy at any time without notice.

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Inspiration

A certain youtuber video on note taking apps inspired us and we implemented many of the core ideas featured in that video. We are passionate about open source and free software. All software must be made free for everyone non commercially or even commercially. We have applied a GNU General Public License v3.0 to our project.

What it does

On local networks, notes can be accessible from any device(tunneling coming soon!), if in the cloud, accessible anywhere there is a internet connection. This software is for anyone who needs persistent text hidden. Journalists, persecuted people, everyday people who are sick of data mining, political dissadents, etc. Notion could at any time change their policy on selling data quietly. Data can be easily exported from the UI at any time, frequent backups in plain text allows the user to truely take control of their data.

Some of its features include

  • User Authentication using Auth0 (temporary until we inplement local passwords, just for hackathon)
  • Plain text exporting of backups
  • Importing of plain text backups
  • Basic UI
  • Persistence through local mongodb database
  • Deleting of notes on command which also deletes them in the database.

How we built it

We built the authentication in flask, scrapped it because the API was too hard to work with when passing data, then we tried svelte, but Auth0 doesn't work with svelte. Then, finally we got it working in React which became the final version.

Challenges we ran into

We attempted to dockerize it with Docker Compose (it needs a React Vite instance of Node, a Express instance, and a Mongo instance and we just ran out of time. After the hackathon we will implement that for smooth user experience.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Have you seen it? It's fully featured. In the short time we had it turned out great and we are really proud of what we made and our philosphy and concept. Persistence between sessions was a big milestone. We hope to get at least a few users.

What we learned

I have a pretty good idea of how to secure a application with Auth0 now. The API was fun to build and I have a better idea about how to use mongo in a real full stack app.

What's next for Found #55

Implement local authentication, scrap auth0, fix docker compose, write documentation, build encryption to be unencypted on load, end to end security, tunneling for home network to be accessible outside of the home, custom port numbers for security, better UI, multiple note tabs, and more!

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