Note-takers struggle to search and navigate their own notes
People using markdown and notebook apps can struggle to retrieve specific material when notes contain imported attachments, footnotes, or nested notebooks. They ask for scoped search, visible note paths, footnote navigation, and find-and-replace; one also wants to filter by where a note was created. Current workflows can depend on remembering filenames or using VS Code to insert image references, while app search views may lack the requested controls.
For markdown note-takers. Mentioned from Jan 2019 to Jun 2025 on product forums, GitHub and Hacker News.
5 different people described this problem in 5 separate discussions.
- Indie fit
- 3.0/10
- Pain
- 5.2/10
- Frequency
- 6.5/10
- Willingness to pay
- 0.0/10
- Momentum
- 5.0/10
- Who pays
- Consumers
- Competition
- Medium
- Build difficulty
- Medium
What people said
Quoted word for word. Follow a link to read the whole discussion.
I find myself lacking a way to search through just the footnotes. Similarly, it would be nice to be able to jump to where the footnote is referenced in the note
Unfortunately, these still don’t resolve the two major pain points: there’s still no efficient way to quickly limit the search scope, and the note path isn’t fully shown in search results
Build brief
See what to build and who will buy it
- 2 product ideas with the smallest useful version and pricing
- 4 places to find your first customers
- 3 more quotes from people who have this problem
- Current workarounds, existing solutions and risks