Show HN: Lightwave – Real-time notes app, 3.5 years of hand-rolled JavaScript
19 points - today at 8:57 PM
Hi HN!
I've been building this solo for about three and a half years. I kept trying every new project/notes tool (Notion, Asana, Trello, etc.) and always ended up back in a plain text file. I wanted something that felt like a text editor on first touch but could grow into real structure when you needed it.
https://lightwave.so (desktop only)
The tech stack is Laravel, MySQL, Redis, and hand-rolled JavaScript on the client. No frameworks like React/Vue/etc. ~270 lines of jQuery (out of 80k+ total LOC) for a few legacy DOM utilities, plus IndexedDB for local persistence. Real-time collaboration uses a hybrid approach: HTTP/2 POST for resilient ops + WebSockets via Laravel Reverb for live cursors, presence, and edits.
This is a pre-release stress test, not a launch. Lightwave will be a paid product. Right now I'm opening it up because no amount of solo testing replicates getting punched in the mouth by real traffic.
The link above has a button to create a test account in 1 click.
Known rough edges: the cursor and selection system are built from scratch (like VS Code, not a contenteditable wrapper), so there's a lot of surface area. Some keyboard shortcuts may be missing. Desktop only, accessibility not yet implemented. I'm shipping fixes in real time.
There's a "Submit Bug or Feedback" button inside the app if something breaks. Happy to answer any questions about the architecture, or anything else.
Some highlights:
- Paste markdown in, get native blocks. Copy blocks out, get markdown back.
- Hierarchical document, structure. Hierarchichal file manager.
- Live collab with shared cursors, selection, and presence.
- Code blocks with syntax highlighting. LaTeX math blocks.
- Full data export: markdown, JSON, and attachments. No lock-in.
- Full undo/redo with cursor restoration.
Comments
I would also make a small suggestion, which is that there is really no need to emphasize the fact that it's hand-written or without React or etc. While I suppose a small segment of users do truly care that you didn't use React, I think the primary consideration for most users will be how the app works. I would suggest mentioning how your technical decisions affect the user experience: is the performance better - and if so, can you quantify that?
On the collab side, any limitations on simultaneous users? Like just a couple at a time or can handle a team?
(AKA: I'm not sure it's a good idea to use someone else's long-standing well-known brand in the digital space as name for your own digital space project)
;-) love the Office Space references
- flickering
- keyboard appears on readonly document
- can select info text that should not be user selectable
- menu items melt into each other
- can‘t summon keyboard on editable content
- grabbing elements in a document and pulling them up leads to page refresh
- I saw a styling menu pop up once: No idea how I got that.
I am sorry but this is unusable and an awful experience on my iPhone.
- manage subscription page broken?
Absolutely nothing here works, besides the anonymous login.