Everything you need
Not another note-taking app. Dotstell is the connective tissue between everything you know.
Write in rich text with slash commands, tables and code blocks. Every note is a node — link anything, anywhere, with [[wikilinks]] as you type.
Type [[ to link any note instantly. Backlinks show every note that references yours. Your writing builds a living knowledge graph automatically.
Track every person in your professional life. Attach notes, tasks and context directly to people. Never lose the thread of a relationship.
Save any URL — title, description and favicon are fetched automatically. Link bookmarks to notes and people. Your reading list becomes knowledge.
Kanban board and list view. Priorities, due dates, overdue alerts. Everything connected to the people and notes it belongs to.
A visual map that builds itself. Wikilinks and manual connections both appear as graph edges. Watch your knowledge become a constellation.
Search across notes, people, bookmarks and tasks instantly. Ctrl+K command palette gets you anywhere in under 2 seconds.
Notion organises notes in blocks and pages — but there's no graph and no connections between them. Obsidian has wikilinks but lives on your local machine; your team, tasks and bookmarks are elsewhere. Dotstell gives you the best of both: rich text editing, cloud sync, and a wikilink system that ties every note to the full context of your professional life.
[[Wikilinks]] between notes
Type [[ anywhere — a live search dropdown appears, select, done.
Backlinks panel on every note
See every note that references yours, in one glance.
Graph auto-builds as you write
No manual arrangement. Links you create in text appear in the graph instantly.
Linked to people, tasks & bookmarks
One click connects a note to the person it involves or the task it spawned.
Pocket and Raindrop are great bookmark managers — but your saved links live in isolation. In Dotstell every bookmark is a first-class knowledge node. Save a paper, link it to the decision note it influenced, connect it to the person who shared it. Your reading history becomes part of your graph, not a graveyard of forgotten tabs.
Auto-fetch on save
Title, description and favicon are captured the moment you paste a URL.
Collections & smart filtering
Organise into named collections. Filter by tag, domain or date.
Link to notes, people & tasks
Found an article for a project? Link it. Someone shared a resource? Attach it to them.
Appears in the knowledge graph
Bookmarks show up as nodes alongside your notes and people.
Dashboard
No digging. No app-switching. Your tasks, notes, bookmarks and overdue alerts — all in one home screen the moment you arrive.
Overdue tasks surface the moment you open the app — with the task name, priority and a one-click path to resolve. No daily review ritual required.
The task progress bar gives you a 3-second pulse check: how many are done, in progress, or overdue. Simple enough to actually use every day.
Recent notes, open tasks and new bookmarks in a single view. Stop deciding which app to open first — Dotstell tells you where to start.
How we compare
Other tools do one thing well. Dotstell connects everything.
| Feature | Notion | Obsidian | Roam | Raindrop | Dotstell |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikilinks between notes | partial | ||||
| Automatic backlinks | |||||
| People & relationships | |||||
| Smart bookmarks | |||||
| Integrated tasks | partial | partial | |||
| Visual knowledge graph | |||||
| Open source | |||||
| Self-hostable (server) | partial | ||||
| Free tier | partial | partial |
“partial” = limited or third-party plugin required · Obsidian self-hosting = local files only, not server deployable
How it works
STEP 01
Write a note, save a link, add a task, or log a person. Everything lands in one place. No friction, no app-switching.
STEP 02
Type [[ in any note to link it to another. Connect notes to people, tasks and bookmarks. The knowledge graph builds itself as you work.
STEP 03
When you need it, everything is there — not just the note, but the decision it connects to, the person it involves, the task it created.
If you capture information and struggle to connect it — Dotstell is for you.
Track 1-on-1s, decisions, team context and follow-ups. Never walk into a meeting unprepared again.
Connect customer conversations to product decisions. See the thread between a user complaint and a shipped feature.
Link technical decisions to the discussions that created them. Build a second brain for your codebase.
Connect ideas across papers, sources and people. Build knowledge that compounds over time.
Knowledge graph
Notes, people, bookmarks and tasks — all connected in a living graph that builds itself as you work.
Wikilinks auto-build edges
Type [[ in a note — the graph updates instantly.
Every entity is a node
Notes, people, bookmarks and tasks all appear together.
Navigate by connection
Click any node to explore what it links to.
Native desktop app
Powered by Tauri — not Electron. The installer is ~10 MB, launches instantly, and uses your OS's own webview.
Windows may show a SmartScreen warning on first run — click More info → Run anyway. This will go away once the app is code-signed. macOS users: right-click → Open on first launch.
Open source
Dotstell is fully open source under AGPL-3.0. Self-host it on your own server. Inspect every line of code. Contribute to make it better. Your data never belongs to us.
Your data, your server
Self-host on any server. Full control, zero vendor lock-in.
AGPL-3.0 licensed
Free to use, fork and modify. Built for the community.
Built in public
Every commit, every decision made openly on GitHub.
Community driven
Features shaped by real users, not investor roadmaps.
The ecosystem
Dotstell is the first app in a long-term open source ecosystem. Every future product shares the same knowledge graph underneath.