Show HN: Kloni – Keyboard-first mind mapping for macOS with tasks built in

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Kloni — Mind mapping for macOS, with tasks built in

Kloni — mind mapping for macOS.<br>Think it through.<br>See it through.

Keyboard-first, local-first mind mapping for macOS,<br>with tasks baked in.

Assign dates, statuses, and priorities to every node.

The same map can hold your first thought<br>and your final task.

Download on the<br>Mac App Store

One-time purchase — no subscription

Mind maps have always been a place for thinking.<br>Kloni<br>is also a place for doing.

The same node you sketched as an idea can become the task you mark done.

The thinking surfaces

Two views,<br>one thought.

A canvas for spatial thinking. An outline for sequential thinking.<br>The same underlying data stays in sync between them.

Write straight into the outline — indent with Tab, add the<br>next line with Enter, fold any branch — then arrange it on the<br>canvas. Or sketch branches loosely and read them back as a document.<br>Whichever lens fits the moment.

Outline

Canvas

Beneath the label

Every node<br>has depth.

A label is just the entry point.

Underneath, every node can carry rich text, attachments,<br>and links out to other maps in your library.

Rich notes.

Open an intuitive rich text editor on any node. Type /<br>for slash commands, or select text for a formatting bubble. Images,<br>tables, code blocks — all live, all inside the bundle so it<br>travels together.

Inline images.

Drop an image onto a node and it renders right on the canvas.<br>Mockups, references, sketches — visible as part of the map.

Three node types.

Default for ideas. Checkbox for tasks, with cascading<br>completion that propagates up and down the tree. Link<br>to attach a URL, openable in one keystroke.

Inter-map links.

Link a node to another map — or to a specific node inside it. The<br>kloni://<br>protocol resolves by stable ID, so links survive a rename. Broken links flag themselves.

Cross-links.

Connect any two nodes with a labeled arc. One-directional<br>or bi-directional, color-coded, smart-routed.<br>For relationships the tree can't express.

File attachments.

Drop images, PDFs, anything — files live inside the<br>map bundle, not scattered across your disk. Forty-plus<br>file types with type-specific icons. Nothing lost on copy.

Properties

Any node,<br>a task.

Tick a checkbox. Set a date. Mark a status. Flag a priority.<br>Any one of them turns a node into a task — without changing<br>what a mind map fundamentally is. Type a date in plain words<br>— tomorrow, next Friday — or pick the<br>calendar, and set it all from the keyboard with /date<br>and /priority.

Four signals, every node, optional everywhere. The branch you<br>sketched as a half-thought yesterday is the task you mark<br>done tomorrow — in the same map,<br>with no conversion, no migration, no second app.

Tasks

Today, inbox,<br>blocked.

Three views surface what's actionable across your whole library.<br>Today — what's due, overdue, or in progress. Inbox —<br>what you've captured but haven't triaged. Blocked — what's<br>waiting on something.

Action-first. Tap a status to cycle it, a checkbox to complete,<br>a node's label to jump to its map. Even checkboxes<br>tucked inside a node's note show up in Inbox, ready to toggle or<br>promote — fast capture without losing the workflow.

Layouts

Nine ways<br>to see the same map.

Layout is a rendering decision, not a data decision.

The same map can be a tree for brainstorming, a table for comparison,<br>and a Kanban board for execution — without losing a node, a note, or a tag.

Switch freely. Find the shape that matches the thought.

Right Tree

The classic. Root on the left, branches growing right.

Top Tree

Root at the top-left, first child beside it, the rest flowing down.

Top Down

Vertical org-chart. Root at top, children fanning out below.

Balanced

Root at center, branches distributed symmetrically on both sides.

Tree List

A dense, file-explorer style for deep hierarchies.

Timeline

Horizontal spine. Milestones alternate above and below.

Ishikawa

Cause-and-effect fishbone. Recursive, for root-cause analysis.

Tree Table

A grid. Rows and columns for tabular visualization.

Columns

Top-level children as headers. Ideal for Kanban and comparison.

Spaces

One library,<br>many contexts.

Group maps into spaces — Work, Reading, Side Projects<br>— and the library becomes organized instead of a flat<br>pile. Maps stay maps; spaces stay light. No nesting, no<br>per-space settings, no slow accretion into "projects with<br>their own everything."

Spaces aren't just folders — they're a scope. Tasks, library exploration,<br>search results all narrow to the active space. Open Today inside<br>Work and you see this week's work; switch to Personal and you see<br>your reading. One scope, every view.

History

Rewind<br>any map.

Every edit — a moved branch, a status change, a rewritten<br>note — flows into a per-map history you can step through and<br>restore from. Open the timeline (⌘⇧H) and scrub:<br>day-grouped entries, plain-language summaries, before-and-after<br>diffs on each node.

Undo goes 250 steps deep and behaves the same on the canvas, in<br>the outline view, and...

node tree first mind tasks kloni

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