A Journey from Tooling to Experience

1. First encounter with notes: why Memos?

When I first started to seriously capture fragmented ideas, I tried many lightweight note apps. Some were easy to pick up right away, but one deeper question stayed with me: who does this record really belong to?

In many commercial note tools, your text seems permanent, but in reality it lives on someone else's servers, surrounded by opaque rules, data exchange flows, and platform-level control. Then I found Memos: an open-source, self-hosted note and memo platform. It gives control back to the user. Content is stored in your own database, exposed through complete RESTful APIs, with no subscription lock-in or hidden terms.

Memos is more than a place to type text. It feels like a memory repository that is actually yours. No dependency on someone else's server policy, and every memo can be kept, migrated, and extended over time. That creates a calm but solid sense of ownership.

2. The experience gap: from "can write" to "want to write"

After using Memos long-term, another reality became clear. Self-hosting solves ownership, but it does not automatically optimize the "write quickly in the moment" experience. In fragmented scenarios, the key barrier is not feature count. The key barrier is whether writing feels immediate and effortless when an idea appears.

On a subway ride, you may only want to tap once, write one sentence, and move on. In this high-frequency, short-lifetime context, traditional Memos interaction still feels heavier than ideal. I gradually realized that experience design decides whether a person keeps recording.

So I did not just want a place that can store notes. I wanted a place that makes people want to write. That became the origin of MemoFlow. MemoFlow does not replace Memos. It extends Memos where mobile interaction needs to be lighter. Memos protects data and synchronization. MemoFlow protects rhythm and usability.

3. From inspiration to differentiation

Before building, I spent a lot of time with many note products. flomo, for example, strongly influenced me with its "quick capture + low pressure + continuous review" philosophy. It encourages writing first and organizing later, which is hard to execute well.

The Memos community is also strong. Projects like moe-memos helped many users get better mobile usage. Plugins and sync tooling broadened what Memos can do. These projects are valuable and pushed the ecosystem forward.

But in my own long-term use, I still wanted one more step: not only adding features, but redesigning the tactile experience of fragmented recording itself. MemoFlow takes that path: learn from mature product thinking, then implement an independent codebase and interaction logic tailored for self-hosted users.

4. The timing: from idea to reality

A few years ago, this idea might have stayed in drafts. Today, AI-assisted development makes it realistic for an individual developer to close the loop from concept to product interaction in a practical timeline. Instead of waiting for a perfect tool to appear, I decided to build it.

For me, MemoFlow is not a temporary side project. It is a long-term answer to one question: how can we keep thoughts with more grace and less friction? It connects two ends: the freedom and control from Memos, and the light, natural rhythm a daily recording app should have.

The core point is simple: self-hosted users deserve an excellent note-taking experience too.