SnippetBox — local-first developer knowledge base
A desktop app for Linux that keeps the code, commands and notes you find while working, so you never re-search the same problem twice.
The problem
Developers solve the same small problems over and over, and then lose the solution. The fix lives in a browser tab, a terminal history or a Slack message — until the next time the problem appears, when the searching starts again.
Existing note apps are either too general or want an account and a syncing backend. Neither fits: the point is speed, offline, on the machine you are already working on.
What we built
A local-first desktop application for Linux. Everything lives on the machine; there is no account, no sync and no server.
- Three-pane workspace — sidebar, snippet list, detail view — that collapses to icons.
- Instant full-text search across titles, descriptions, code, notes, tags, collections and source URLs, backed by SQLite FTS5 with ranked results.
- Search operators —
tag:docker language:bash collection:backend is:favorite before:2026-01-01— combined with free text, each shown as a removable chip. - A real code editor built on CodeMirror 6: syntax highlighting for 30+ languages, code folding, multiple selections, find-in-code, and light and dark palettes designed separately.
- Autosave with history — a
Saving… / Savedindicator, and a snapshot of the previous content the first time something changes.
Shipping it, not just building it
The app is packaged as a .deb and a portable AppImage, published with
checksums so downloads can be verified. A tool for developers has to install
cleanly and start fast, or it never gets used.
Outcome
A released, local-first tool that does one job quickly and works with the network off.
This case study is a draft built from the product's own documentation. The metrics and claims need the owner's sign-off before publication.
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