Nexia

Cross-platform personal knowledge management with spatial notes, relationships, and intelligent agents.

Contents

• What is Nexia?
• Philosophy
• Architecture
  • Tech Stack
  • Why This Stack?
• Features
  • MVP (v0.1)
  • Future
• Project Structure
• Getting Started
  • Prerequisites
  • Development
• Contributing
  • Development Principles
• License
• Acknowledgments
• Architecture

What is Nexia?

Nexia is an open-source, cross-platform knowledge management tool inspired by Tinderbox. It provides:

• Spatial Canvas - Arrange notes visually, see relationships at a glance

• Linked Notes - First-class bidirectional links between ideas

• Intelligent Agents - Persistent queries that continuously organize your knowledge

• Prototype Inheritance - Notes inherit attributes from templates

• Local-First - Your data lives on your device, in readable formats

• True Cross-Platform - Same app on Desktop, Mobile, and Web

Philosophy

Your knowledge is yours. Not in a cloud you don’t control. Not locked in a proprietary format. Not dependent on a company’s survival.

Nexia follows the local-first philosophy:

1. Data stored as human-readable files (JSON/XML)

2. Works offline by default

3. Optional sync is additive, never required

4. Export to open formats (HTML, Markdown, OPML)

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    ReScript + TEA                        │
│              (rescript-tea, cadre-tea-router)            │
│                   Single UI Codebase                     │
└─────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────┘
                      │
        ┌─────────────┼─────────────┐
        ▼             ▼             ▼
   ┌─────────┐  ┌─────────┐  ┌─────────────┐
   │  Tauri  │  │  Tauri  │  │   Browser   │
   │ Desktop │  │ Mobile  │  │  (WASM/JS)  │
   └────┬────┘  └────┬────┘  └──────┬──────┘
        │            │              │
        └────────────┼──────────────┘
                     ▼
         ┌───────────────────────┐
         │      Rust Core        │
         │  Graph · Search · IO  │
         └───────────────────────┘

Tech Stack

Layer	Technology	Purpose
UI Framework	ReScript + TEA	Type-safe functional UI with The Elm Architecture
Routing	cadre-tea-router	URL-based navigation, deep linking
Desktop/Mobile	Tauri 2.0	Native shell for Linux, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android
Web	WASM + PWA	Browser deployment, offline support
Core Engine	Rust	Graph operations, search indexing, file I/O
Configuration	Nickel (bunsenite)	Type-safe configuration and schema definitions
Storage	Local files + IndexedDB	Platform-adaptive persistence

Why This Stack?

ReScript + TEA gives us:

• Exhaustive pattern matching (compiler catches missed states)

• Pure update functions (easy testing, time-travel debugging)

• Single source of truth (no stale UI bugs)

• Type-safe message passing

Tauri 2.0 gives us:

• True cross-platform (desktop AND mobile from one codebase)

• Small binary sizes (~10MB vs Electron’s ~150MB)

• Native performance

• Secure by default (no Node.js attack surface)

Rust gives us:

• Memory safety without GC pauses

• Excellent graph libraries (petgraph)

• Fast full-text search (tantivy)

• WASM compilation for browser

Features

MVP (v0.1)

• ❏ Create, edit, delete notes

• ❏ Spatial canvas with drag-and-drop

• ❏ Bidirectional linking between notes

• ❏ Basic search

• ❏ Local file storage (JSON)

• ❏ Desktop app (Linux, macOS, Windows)

Future

• ❏ Agents (persistent queries)

• ❏ Prototype inheritance

• ❏ Timeline view

• ❏ Mobile apps (iOS, Android)

• ❏ Web app (PWA)

• ❏ Rich text editing

• ❏ Entity extraction (names, dates, places)

• ❏ Export (HTML, Markdown, OPML)

• ❏ Optional sync between devices

Project Structure

nexia/
├── core/                 # Rust - graph engine, search, storage
│   ├── Cargo.toml
│   └── src/
│       ├── lib.rs
│       ├── graph.rs      # Note relationships
│       ├── search.rs     # Full-text indexing
│       └── storage.rs    # File I/O
├── ui/                   # ReScript - TEA application
│   ├── rescript.json
│   └── src/
│       ├── Main.res      # Entry point
│       ├── Model.res     # Application state
│       ├── Update.res    # Message handling
│       ├── View.res      # Rendering
│       ├── Canvas.res    # Spatial view
│       └── Note.res      # Note component
├── desktop/              # Tauri desktop configuration
│   ├── tauri.conf.json
│   └── src/
│       └── main.rs       # Tauri commands
├── mobile/               # Tauri mobile configuration
│   ├── ios/
│   └── android/
├── web/                  # Browser/PWA build
│   ├── index.html
│   └── service-worker.js
├── config/               # Nickel schemas
│   └── note-schema.ncl
└── docs/
    └── ROADMAP.adoc

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Deno (package management, scripts)

• Rust (core engine)

• Tauri prerequisites (platform-specific)

Development

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/hyperpolymath/nexia-list.git
cd nexia-list

# Install dependencies
deno task setup

# Run development server
deno task dev

# Build for production
deno task build

Contributing

Contributions welcome! Please read our Contributing Guide first.

Development Principles

1. Local-first always - Never require network for core functionality

2. Platform parity - Features should work on all platforms

3. Type safety - Leverage ReScript’s type system fully

4. Performance - Keep UI responsive with 10,000+ notes

5. Simplicity - Resist feature creep, do fewer things well

License

PMPL-1.0-or-later. See LICENSE for details.

Your knowledge is yours. The code to manage it should be too.

Acknowledgments

• Tinderbox - The inspiration for spatial note-taking

• ReScript - Type-safe language compiling to JS

• Tauri - Cross-platform app framework

• hyperpolymath ecosystem - ReScript-TEA, rescript-tauri, bunsenite

Architecture

See TOPOLOGY.md for a visual architecture map and completion dashboard.