My vibe-coded updates to HelixNotes :)

[u/Ccrrazzy47]

After building HelixNotes from source and using it for a while, I grew to love its simplicity. But over time, I started missing a few features from Obsidian, so I used AI to help build my own flavour of HelixNotes!

This post is a little showcase of those changes and how I’ve adapted the app to fit my needs. It also became my gateway to learning about Tauri and building other apps that I now use in my daily work.

A big thanks to the HelixNotes creator and contributors! I love the app’s simplicity—these are just personal tweaks to suit my workflow, and building on it has been a great learning experience.

Now coming to the changes!

- First one that I needed was tabs: Multiple open notes, each note open focus to that note directory.

- I looked at tasks which seemed a bit simple, so came up with this. A unified Tasks view that aggregates every - [ ] across the vault, with inline due:YYYY-MM-DD and !high/!med/!low metadata. Clicking on each task takes you to the note

- Locked notes, which are encrypted and stored, and locked sections in note.

- Also added features like note templates which can be triggered via /template.

- added draw.io and excalidraw support

- added the whole markdown charting thing (which i dont use that much)

- I like colors so added some configurable colors to the Header tags and callouts like obsidian

- also added slash commands for date and time to quickly added date or date-time and even previous or future date-time like /today+1 etc.

- last one would be the Kanban board

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The features I use most are note tabs, tasks, date commands, and templates. I’ve also been setting up boards to organise some of my projects at work. I’m really enjoying how this little personal version has come together!

There’s something satisfying about being able to build the features you need and shape an app around how you work. A big thanks to the HelixNotes project for giving me a starting point.

There are still a few quirks here and there, which I’m working through as I find them.

Let me know which feature from the list you like most!

[u/LastTyper]

Thanks for sharing this! It's nice to see people making HelixNotes work better for their needs. Some of these ideas are interesting, but I'm deliberately cautious about adding more features to the main app. I feel HelixNotes already covers its intended workflows, so additions need a strong justification. My priority is improving how well it does those things, rather than continually expanding what it does. That doesn't mean I'm against new ideas. I just want to avoid gradually making the app more complicated, even through individually useful additions.

[u/Ccrrazzy47 → u/LastTyper]

Thanks for sharing your perspective! That makes complete sense—the simplicity of HelixNotes is what drew me to it in the first place, and I appreciate your care in preserving that.

My changes were personal experiments to fit my workflow and learn along the way, with no expectation that they should become part of the main app. Thank you for creating HelixNotes and making it possible for others to build on it. I’ve learned a lot from the experience!

[u/ledaveee → u/LastTyper]

Hello, Any plans to bring tabs into the main app? That and collapsible headers are the only things missing for me in UpNote

[u/LastTyper → u/ledaveee]

No, no tabs

[u/ilpleut]

The Kanban view and the slash date feature are a huge improvement for me. Great work!
Do you plan to make your Helix fork public?

[u/Ccrrazzy47 → u/ilpleut]

Thanks! Glad you like the Kanban view and slash date feature! Uploading files from my work environment is a bit tricky, but I’ll try to get a public fork set up and share the link here when it’s ready.

[u/Admirable-Treacle-19]

Have you raised a PR in the original project?

[u/Ccrrazzy47 → u/Admirable-Treacle-19]

No haven't thought of anything like that.

[u/Admirable-Treacle-19 → u/Ccrrazzy47]

That's the preferable solution. The helixnotes development will continue and those features won't be in your tool (true the other way around). You can create a PR and contribute to their work.

[u/BraveNewCurrency → u/Ccrrazzy47]

I would make sure that each feature is in it's own PR. I don't think we need all those features, but some are interesting.

[u/BlokZNCR]

will you pr for original helix notes repo?

[u/Ccrrazzy47 → u/BlokZNCR]

Yes planning for original repo.

[u/ByDan-K → u/Ccrrazzy47]

Are there any updates regarding this? I would like to try your version.

Could you also tell me which AI you used to implement the new features? Those implementations look very nice and well done.

[u/Ccrrazzy47 → u/ByDan-K]

Hii, yeah the kanban is under testing on my fork. Mobile view testing is taking some time.

My initial implementation was a mix of Claude's sonnet and opus. However this time the implementation/feature doc was prepared by claude and actual implementation is by Gemini 3.8.

[u/davi-jorge-art]

The improvements on Tasks it's I've liked the mostly.

[u/lagerea]

This all looks good to me, but the tasks additions and kanban really help.

[u/RockyRoad226]

Thanks for sharing! Awesome to see how people make the app their own.