With a deliberately minimalist design philosophy and zero database dependencies, DumbPad delivers a self-hosted notepad that stores notes as plain text files with real-time auto-saving every 10 seconds and keyboard-shortcut manual saves. The Node.js Express backend serves a vanilla JavaScript frontend that supports multiple named notepads with direct URL linking and shareable links for instant access to specific notes. The split-view editor displays markdown source on the left and rendered preview on the right with a draggable resize handle, while the full preview mode renders complete markdown with GitHub-style alert blocks for Note, Tip, Important, Warning, and Caution callouts, extended table formatting, fenced code blocks with syntax highlighting via highlight.js covering approximately 180 programming languages, collapsible details sections, and checklist support. Fuzzy search matches across both filenames and file contents for fast navigation across large collections. Optional PIN protection secures access with configurable 4 to 10 digit codes, constant-time comparison to prevent timing attacks, brute force lockout after 5 failed attempts with 15-minute cooldown, and IP-based tracking. The Docker container runs as non-root UID 1000 by default with multi-architecture support, CORS origin restrictions for reverse proxy deployments, and persistent data volumes. Notes can be downloaded as text or markdown files, printed with auto-expanded collapsible sections, and imported by placing text files directly into the data directory. On RepoCloud, deploy DumbPad on a dedicated VPS with Docker, root SSH access, and complete control over your note-taking infrastructure, all under the GPL-3.0 license.

Real-time collaborative Markdown behind your own firewall: HedgeDoc (formerly CodiMD, descended from HackMD's open-source edition) keeps team notes on team infrastructure. Share a note's URL and collaborators are editing together instantly - live cursors, changes appearing keystroke by keystroke - in a three-mode interface that toggles between raw Markdown, rendered preview, and side-by-side split. The Markdown dialect is extended where engineers need it: Mermaid, Graphviz, and Vega-Lite diagrams, MathJax for equations, syntax-highlighted code blocks, embedded content, and a presentation mode that turns a note into reveal.js slides with a single YAML header. A dropdown permission system controls each note - freely editable, limited to signed-in users, or locked read-only - and published notes become clean read-only pages for wider distribution. Revisions track every change with the ability to revert to any earlier version. The AGPL-3.0 codebase is light enough to run on a Raspberry Pi and deploys via Docker with PostgreSQL, MySQL, or SQLite. Authentication covers LDAP, SAML, OAuth2, and email. It deliberately stays a focused document editor - no page trees or kanban - and does that one job with excellent keyboard-first ergonomics for meeting notes, RFCs, runbooks, and shared scratchpads.