a notion alternative

shizumu is a notion alternative for the writing you do to think, not the workspace you build around it.

how the two behave

notion is a workspace. pages inside pages, databases, views, templates and a team to share them with, all in its cloud behind an account. it is good at being a system, and the work of a system happens before the writing: deciding the structure, then filling it in.

shizumu is a page. you open it and write. there is no database to design and nowhere to file the result. the writing is on your device, sync is optional and end-to-end encrypted, and the app is free on linux, android and windows.

what you keep, and what you leave behind

notion exports markdown and csv, so the words and the tables come out. what does not come across is the machinery: no databases, no relations, no shared workspace, no templates. if your notion is a team's operating system, keep it. if you migrate from notion because the daily writing got buried under the structure, the emptiness is the point of the move.

what a page does instead

every day starts empty. you write, you pin what turns out to matter, and when a thread continues past today you put the page on a trail. the pins you kept there come back onto the page the next time you open that trail, so the context finds you instead of you going to look for it. everything else stays in memory, searchable.

the page still has real tools: / for a table, a chart, an outline, a block of code, and @ to reach a page, a pin or a trail. a local notion alternative does not have to mean a plain text file.

on writing that writes itself

people looking for a notion ai replacement usually want the opposite of what they ask for: fewer prompts and more of their own sentences. shizumu will not write for you, because the writing is the thinking. tools that help you find what you already wrote are a different matter.

try before you move

the app runs in your browser with a few weeks of writing already in it: try it. also worth a look: an evernote alternative and an obsidian alternative.

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