miaoyan

MiaoYan is a lightweight Markdown note-taking application for macOS, positioned as a local-first writing tool. It is distributed as a native Swift 6 app and requires macOS 12.0 or later. Core capabilities described in the README: - Local-first storage with no data collection. Notes are plain Markdown files kept in a folder the user selects. - Split editor and preview mode with real-time preview and bidirectional scroll sync; toggled with Cmd+\ or via Preferences. - Wikilink backlinks, LaTeX, and Mermaid support. - Minimalist three-column layout, dark mode, and a distraction-free writing environment. - Version history, keyboard shortcuts, and auto-formatting. - A command-line interface installed via a shell script, with commands to open, create, search, list, and print notes, plus a self-update command. - Documentation covering Markdown syntax, a PPT presentation mode using --- slide separators, and an agent skill installable with npx skills add. Installation options listed are the Mac App Store (paid, with automatic updates), Homebrew via brew install --cask miaoyan, and DMG downloads from GitHub Releases. All three are said to share the same codebase and updates. After installation, users create a MiaoYan folder in iCloud Drive or another location and set the storage path in Preferences. Sync is handled externally: MiaoYan does not sign in to WebDAV or cloud-drive accounts. Instead, it reads and writes the chosen Markdown folder, and clients such as iCloud Drive, Nutstore, or Dropbox perform cross-device sync. The app checks read and write access before switching folders and keeps the current path if the new folder is unavailable. The README states the project is MIT licensed and acknowledges several open-source dependencies for Markdown parsing, formatting, syntax highlighting, and presentation rendering. It also notes that the author offers a separate paid Mac app as a means of support.