bvandeusen
56264a9220
Reported from the device with a screenshot: six items took up most of a phone screen. The rows measured ~57dp apart, which is Material's TextField content padding almost exactly — 16dp above the text, 16dp below, around a 24dp line. That padding is right for a form field, where it is the difference between a comfortable target and a fiddly one. On a checklist it IS the row height, so every item was paying for a hit area the checkbox beside it already provides. The editor's blocks drop to BasicTextField. Nothing about the "no box" treatment is lost — PlainTextField exists to strip a container and an indicator, and BasicTextField never had either, so there is nothing here to drift back into existence. What it does not supply and BlockField now does: the text colour, which defaults to Color.Unspecified and draws BLACK (the same default that made the toolbar invisible in dark mode), the cursor brush for the same reason, and the placeholder, which becomes a plain Text behind the field. PlainTextField keeps serving the search box, the label picker and the sync-pairing form — fields where Material's padding is what you want. Its TextFieldValue overload went with the change: the editor was its only caller, and every remaining one passes a String. Rows are now bound by the 48dp checkbox rather than by the field. If that is still looser than it should be, the next lever is the touch targets themselves, which trades against how easy the box is to hit — worth looking at on a device before spending it.
ThoughtSync
Self-hosted personal thought-capture web app in the FabledSword family — a
Google-Keep-style masonry post-it board for capturing disparate thoughts in
under a second, designed to grow into a lightweight second brain (labels, search,
[[wiki-links]], graph).
- Stack: Quart (async Python) + Vue 3 + PostgreSQL, Docker, Fabled-Git CI.
- Auth: native email + password (signed-cookie sessions). Multi-user with the family owner + direct-share + group-share ACL.
- Web-first. An Android companion is a later, conditional milestone.
Layout
src/thoughtsync/ Quart app (app factory, auth, models, ACL, config, db)
alembic/ async migrations (schema built via `alembic upgrade head`)
tests/ DB-free unit tests (pytest)
frontend/ Vue 3 + Vite + TypeScript + Tailwind SPA
Dockerfile 2-stage build (Vue -> python:3.12-slim runtime)
docker-compose.yml local app + Postgres stack
Development
Backend (needs a Postgres reachable at THOUGHTSYNC_DATABASE_URL):
pip install -e ".[dev]"
alembic upgrade head
hypercorn 'thoughtsync.app:create_app()' --bind 0.0.0.0:5000
Frontend (proxies /api to :5000):
cd frontend
npm install
npm run dev # http://localhost:5173
Or run it in Docker. Hot-reload dev stack (edit code, changes reload live) — Postgres + backend + Vite dev server, app at http://localhost:5173:
docker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml up
Or the full production image (SPA baked in) at http://localhost:5000:
docker compose up --build
Deploy (self-host)
A complete two-container stack (app + Postgres) you can copy and run. Save it as
docker-compose.yml, change the two CHANGE_ME passwords (they must match), then
docker compose up -d:
services:
db:
image: postgres:16-alpine
restart: unless-stopped
environment:
POSTGRES_USER: thoughtsync
POSTGRES_PASSWORD: CHANGE_ME # change this
POSTGRES_DB: thoughtsync
volumes:
- thoughtsync-db:/var/lib/postgresql/data
healthcheck:
test: ["CMD-SHELL", "pg_isready -U thoughtsync"]
interval: 5s
timeout: 5s
retries: 10
app:
image: git.fabledsword.com/bvandeusen/thoughtsync:latest # :dev for the current dev build
restart: unless-stopped
depends_on:
db:
condition: service_healthy
environment:
THOUGHTSYNC_DATABASE_URL: postgresql+asyncpg://thoughtsync:CHANGE_ME@db:5432/thoughtsync
volumes:
- thoughtsync-data:/var/thoughtsync # uploaded images; omit if you don't use attachments
ports:
- "5000:5000"
volumes:
thoughtsync-db:
thoughtsync-data:
Then open http://<host>:5000 and register — the first account becomes the admin.
- Only
THOUGHTSYNC_DATABASE_URLis required.THOUGHTSYNC_SECRET_KEYis optional; if unset, a signing key is generated and persisted in the database (sessions survive restarts). - Uploaded images live under the
thoughtsync-datavolume at/var/thoughtsync. - The app waits for the database and runs migrations (
alembic upgrade head) automatically on start. - Image tags:
:latest(stable, built frommain) ·:dev(latestdevbuild) ·:<git-sha>(immutable, for pinning / rollback). - Putting it on the public internet: there are four things to do first — close
registration, terminate TLS and forward
X-Forwarded-Proto, stop publishing the app port, and back up the attachment volume as well as the database. See docs/public-hosting.md, which also lists what the app hardens on its own and what it deliberately doesn't. - Install as an app (PWA): ThoughtSync is installable ("Add to Home Screen" / the
browser's install button) for an app-like window. Browsers only offer install over a
secure context, so put the app behind a reverse proxy terminating HTTPS (or reach
it via
localhost) — plainhttp://<host>:5000won't show the install prompt.
Milestones
- M0 — Foundation & Identity ✅: Quart+Vue+Postgres skeleton, native auth, sharing-ACL spine, Fabled-Git CI.
- M1 — Capture Core ✅: note model + masonry board (quick-add, colors, pin, edit-in-place, archive, trash+restore).
- M1.5 — Roles & DB-backed Settings ✅: first user is admin, admin Settings UI,
DATABASE_URLis the only required env. - M2 — Organize: labels/tags, search, checklists, attachments.
- M3 — Second-brain seeds:
[[wiki-links]], backlinks, graph view, reminders. - M4 — Launch hardening: responsive/PWA, settings UI, polish.
Work happens on dev; main is protected (PR-only).