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DESIGN.md

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Requirements

Database View

Mainly, we want to support the rich dynamic database view in notion.

Pages

We want pages to support arbitrary metadata properties (for the database view). The body of pages will simply be a markdown document.

Property Types

For each property type, it's important to be a target for filtering and sorting, so throwing these values into a JSON field becomes pretty unergonomic for those use-cases in SQL.

With that in mind, we'll support these property types:

  • boolean (checkbox)
  • int
  • float
  • string
  • multi-string (like tags)
  • date
  • datetime

Project Tracking

I want to try to make something that is better than notion at software project tracking, specifically, in the following ways:

  • smart notifications (see "notifications")
  • dependency tracking (see "dependency view")
  • git integration (see "git integration")

Notifications

You don't get notified unless you are called out w/ @ or if you apply a following::<your user> tag to the page.

Later, we can implement rule-sets whereby following::<your name> can be auto-added to pages.

Dependency View

page_dependency will be modeled in the database. Every page can have one or more dependency. There can be a "show dependencies" dropdown where all of the direct or indirect dependencies are shown in a tree.

Git Integration

Let's cut out the middleman and integrate directly with git. Our app will need access to a git remote URI from which we can fetch updates. Then, every page can have a "relevant refs" field where commits related to the ticket can be input. We can also support a tagging syntax like nc113 in git commit messages, which can cause that ref to be pulled in as relevant when it's fetched. Then, once we have this link-up, we can display diffs right in the web UI.

SQL Swiss-Army Knife

I want to try to make this tool also serve as a frontend for a SQL database, like Prisma studio. For startups, it would be awesome to have a tool that blends the lines between notion and SQL.

Collection = DB Table

A collection is a set of pages. A database table and its set of rows, therefore, maps onto this abstraction layer.

Page Props Can Extend Columns

It should be possible to add props to a database collection view. Here, the notion clone extends the data in the database itself, allowing ad-hoc experimentation on top of the database schema.

Page Props can Backfill the Database

After the aformentioned ad-hoc'ing, maybe we want to push props from the notion clone down into the database. That can be done with a single click!

For this part of the project, I'd like to add a CLI to our main binary, probably using argh.

Page Content is Internal Notes

Notes about a row in the database will be the content of a page.

Relations -> Hyperlinks

This is a common pattern for nice DB frontends, but obviously any relation should work like a link in the frontend. Additionally, if there is page content ("internal notes") on a related row,

Roadmap

Things I'm not building yet, but a dumping ground for ideas.

  • formulaic properties

Tech Notes

Markdown

We can use markdown=rs, which is an XSS-safe markdown parser.