Two people joined my waitlist! + Building the "Anti-Friction" Note App

What happened this week: I posted on IndieHackers, got some traction, and two people joined the waitlist 🎉. It’s a small win, but knowing someone is actually interested feels incredible.

I’m a product person at a big-ish corporation, often running from meeting to meeting. I’m building Vist for myself because I need to capture thoughts fast and find them instantly. I’ve been using it daily since the first prototype.

⌨️ The War on the Mouse

This week I obsessed over keyboard workflows. I found myself reaching for the mouse and getting annoyed. As a builder, how do you fix that? You write Cucumber tests for the workflows you do 50 times a day:

Scenario: Complete a task without touching the mouse
  Given I’m typing in a note
  When I press Esc to leave editing mode
  And I press Cmd+1 to switch to Today’s tasks
  And I press Down Down to navigate to a task two entries down
  And I press Cmd+Enter to complete it
  And I press Cmd+2 to return to the folder I was in
  And I press Enter
  Then I should be back where I was typing
  And the task should be marked complete

It took three days to get the DOM timing and Stimulus controllers to stop fighting, but now? It flows. No context switching. No mouse.

🎨 Code Aesthetics

Added syntax highlighting for 15 languages. I went with the Tokyo Night theme. Reading code has a particular aesthetic impact; grey monospace blocks just don't cut it when you're trying to stay in the zone.

🔍 Why I’m building this

I’ve used everything—Evernote, Notion, Obsidian, Bear, even OneNote. I usually switch every six months because the friction gets too high.

• Notion: Too slow. Where do I save this? Why is there a spinner?
• Obsidian: Too much setup. I just want to write.
• The Gap: Notes and tasks are usually separate. I need them linked.

The Vision: Fast. Markdown-native. Tasks extracted from checkboxes. Keyboard-first. And—crucially—EU-hosted. I’m tired of our digital lives being 100% dependent on US geopolitical risk.

🛠️ The Tech Stack

• Rails 8 (Learned it 3 weeks ago!)
• PostgreSQL with ActsAsTenant
• Stimulus + Tailwind (No SPA bloat)
• Kamal 2 on Hetzner (Cheap, EU-based)
• The Differentiator: MCP (Model Context Protocol) from day one.

Because Vist has a full MCP server, Claude can search my notes, manage tasks, and remember my preferences (like 2-space indentation) across sessions.

💡 Lessons Learned

1. Keyboard UX is a minefield: Event bubbling and focus management in web apps are hard, but the "Chef's kiss" feeling when it works is worth it.
2. TDD for Product People: Writing Gherkin acceptance criteria keeps me honest. If I wonder what code I wrote at 2 AM last week does, I just read the specs.
3. AI Agents: They are like offshore dev teams. Great user stories = great results.

🚢 Launching in 1–2 weeks

The first 100 people get Founder Pricing (€3/month, locked forever). After that, it moves to €5–8.

If you’re a developer or product person who types faster than you click:
👉 Sign up for the waitlist — usevist.dev

💬 Questions for you all!

1. For keyboard-driven builders: What’s your approach to testing shortcuts? Cucumber feels a bit fragile—any better ways?
2. For AI/MCP users: If your AI assistant had access to your task list, what’s the one thing you’d want it to do automatically?
3. For EU folks: Does data residency actually matter to you, or am I just being paranoid?