GoodNotes

Promptfree, for everyone, and the only version there is

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Do not build this. Ink that feels like paper is the product, and it is not a feature list.

Latency from stylus to line under a few milliseconds, pressure and tilt, palm rejection, prediction so the stroke appears to arrive under the nib rather than behind it — that combination is the thing, and it is deep platform work. A homemade version feels wrong immediately and no amount of features rescues it.

WHAT TO DO INSTEAD
- Keep it. Handwriting applications are cheap for what they are, and the good ones represent years of tuning
- If you want the files to be yours: check that it exports PDF with the ink preserved, and export regularly. That is the only lock-in that matters here

WHAT YOU CAN BUILD, AND SHOULD

**The layer around your notes**, which no handwriting application does well:
- Export every notebook as PDF on a schedule, into a directory you back up
- Run text recognition over them locally, storing the extracted text in SQLite with FTS5, so a search covers handwriting the application's own search may not
- Link a page to whatever it relates to — a project, a meeting, a document — because a handwritten page is usually about something and the application does not know what
- A daily or weekly resurfacing of old pages, which is what turns notes taken into notes used
- Everything local, encrypted, never uploaded. Handwritten notes are unusually personal

AND THE THING TO CHECK TODAY
Open a notebook from two years ago and confirm it still renders correctly. Then export it and confirm the export is readable without the application. Most people have never tested either, and the answer decides whether a decade of notes is safe or hostage.

THE ONE-LINE VERSION
Never write the ink engine. Export on a schedule, index the text yourself, and go and open your oldest notebook.