I don't do marketing (I do a post on reddit once in 3 months or so for updates, but it doesn't get that much traction). Feel like it's word of mouth. Some of the early users told more people they knew, and they did the same.

Now a ton of customers bring the name up in their reddit threads (like you did here), and that's generally it.

I'd love for conversions to be higher compared to the install count, but it's still healthy for an indie project with a relatively higher price point (people are too used to free, or $19 products).

As for revenue, it did give me enough confidence to quit my day job (was pretty well paid for my country), and Octarine since the past 3 months, has exceeded that as well :)

Also the app's been around for over 3 years now, and isn't vibe coded (since I saw it in this thread around vibe coding apps).

Open to any feedback if you've been using it for a while

Haven't checked the repo, but guessing you using the opendota apis? Anything that you do different compared to dotabuff/opendota?

In the counter pick, would love if you could enter a match ID to prefill data, and then see what could've been a better pick? Last picked Ember but was countered by the enemy picking Ursa on their last pick. Given the rest of the draft would a different hero would be better?

Built with tauri & rust, and is more performant, and doesn't rely on random contributions for basic things as plugins.

Disclaimer - I build it.

Having to rely on random devs for the most basic functionality and passing it off as `community does what it wants` is weird. Either add it in yourselves, or accept the fact that given your app requires external contributors to work at a little above the basic level, there are going to be security issues.

Writing a whole blog post, and throwing shade on "other apps" that have far more dependencies than Obsidian is weird to me.

Anyway, it seems like you can't really talk bad about them, since there's a huge following that just comes at you, and that feels weird, cause they apparently can throw shade, others can't just talk back.

I try to solve this by running a small embedding model on device, and the Ask Octarine feature, suggests what you may need to find/look. Isn't as sophisticated as Spotify's or the recommendation algo, however it provides a nice starting point, and then allows you to chat/RAG your way around notes!

Here's a small documentation writeup & video about it, if you want to look instead of try - https://docs.octarine.app/working-with-ai/ask-octarine

If an fps counter makes an app seem illegitimate to you, and the countless changelog, user testimonials don’t help, then nothing I say will convince you otherwise, so I’m not going to waste either of our times :)

The use case is far too niche to move engineering efforts to immediately, so it'll be prioritised when either:

- the ask quantity increases.

- when an adjacent part of the code is being improved/fixed and this could be tacked upon in the same release.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Since find/replace works fine for the current use case (even if not optimal)

I've had a report before where they keyboard layout messes up, for Z & Y. `Cmd + Y` is Recently viewed while `Z` does undo

Currently keymaps aren't modifiable, but there's an item on the roadmap to change hotkeys.

React, Typescript, Tailwind, Tiptap - Frontend

File level operations, search - rust

Lot's of things planned while aiming to keep the lightweight and opionionated philosophy!

1. Discord (https://octarine.app/discord)

2. Github (http://octarine.app/issues)

Currently the app supports 33 themes (3 free, 30 on the pro license). There's an item on the roadmap that would allow you to create your own themes (each theme is a palette of 10-12 variables - border/bg/text/outline)

Hope you like the app :)

- Lightweight (< 30MB, fast to launch, no Electron bloat).

- Opinionated (good defaults, clean UI, not a plugin bazaar).

- Yours (all plain Markdown, nothing proprietary).

---

- Command bar (Cmd/Ctrl+K) to navigate and run commands quickly.

- WYSIWYG editor (rich text without live preview jumping).

- Git sync built-in — backups to GitHub/GitLab, no plugins.

- Natural language dates (“yesterday”, “last week”).

- Multiple workspaces, templates, tags, graph view.

- Backup anywhere — iCloud, Dropbox, Syncthing.

- Tabs & Panes — split and rearrange notes/graphs like a code editor.

*Pro Features*

- BYOK for over 9 AI providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, Gemini and more!

- Ask Octarine — chat with your notes (RAG, embeddings done on-device).

- Writing Assistant — Sidebar assistant to help rewrite, improve or create.

- Focus Mode — distraction-free, sentence spotlight.

- Customisation — 30+ fresh themes, different paper types.

- Locked Notes — Disallow a note from editing.

- Folder Customisations — Add icons/colors to folders, have them manage their own unique sorting.

*FAQ*

- Free plan gets updates forever; some features are Pro.

- Pro is a one-time license (no yearly “updates tax”).

- Over 130+ releases shipped.

- iOS app is in development.

- Overlaps with Obsidian, but follows different methodologies about having less but baked in features, over an extensible plugin system (each work for different users)

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Try it: [octarine.app](http://octarine.app)

Changelog: [octarine.app/changelog](https://octarine.app/changelog)

Documentation: [docs.octarine.app](https://docs.octarine.app)

I’d love your feedback - what works, what feels off, what’s missing? Always open to ideas (and criticism).

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45061399

Points: 44

# Comments: 20