Features
catastr is a layer of metadata, search and relations over files, modelled loosely on DEVONthink. The name comes from the cadastre — the register that records every parcel of land without touching the soil.
The feature set follows my own needs, not a market.
Works today
| Area | What works |
|---|---|
| Indexing | Org, Markdown, PDF, plain text, Denote. A watcher keeps the index current. |
| Media | Images, audio, video and archives are indexed and previewed. Supernote notes are rendered. |
| Through notmuch. Threads become relations, notmuch tags sync both ways. | |
| Search | Full text with stemming and word prefixes; tags, fields, dates, facets. |
| Similar | Embeddings: “show me documents like this one”. |
| Organising | Tags, collections as saved searches, manual links, bookmarks, a trash. Tag suggestions from similar documents. |
| Graph | Connections of a document or a search result, in the browser. |
| Sync | Several devices share one collection; each folder at its own level of detail. |
| Front ends | CLI, Emacs, web, desktop (Tauri), Android (since today). |
A look at it
Possibly next
Ideas from the plan, in no particular order and without promises:
- Photos: EXIF time and place, Immich as a source
- Audio transcripts via whisper
- Handwriting recognition for Supernote notes
- Web clipping and RSS
- Rules that sort incoming items
- An MCP server, so LLMs can search the collection