Understory is a Mac notes app for people who take notes in order to write something. Collect notes as you read, arrange them into an outline, and draft each section with your research beside it. Then publish as a PDF, Rich Text, Markdown or a website.
Hey Product Hunt 👋 I’m Allen, the maker of Understory.
Networked notes apps usually make you connect ideas with wiki-style links, which gets tedious fast. I’ve spent two years and at least half a dozen UIs looking for a better way.
In Understory, you link notes by placing them. Put one note beneath another and it becomes a subnote, and the two are connected. The result looks like an outline, with one difference: the same note can be a subnote of as many notes as you like. That makes it a network, shown as a tree, and it replaces both folders and most links.
Related notes end up next to each other, forming neighborhoods of ideas. And because a note can live in several neighborhoods, it works like a portal: follow it and you step from one into another. That’s where you spot connections you didn’t know were there.
Mac only, for now
Free to try, one-time purchase, no subscription
No account, and your notes can be plain Markdown files
It’s a different way to organize notes, so it takes a little use to click. Once it does, you stop filing and linking and just put ideas where they belong. I’m working on more videos to explain it. In the meantime, I’d love your feedback: what made sense right away, and what didn’t?
I tried placing one note under two different headings, and that clicked faster than I expected. In legal and academic writing the same precedent or paper often supports two different arguments, and with folders and links I always end up duplicating it. Do you plan to support citation keys (Zotero/BibTeX), so the bibliography follows the note wherever it's placed and comes out right in the PDF export?
Collecting notes as you read, then drafting each section with the research next to it, is how I actually write. When a note comes from something you read, does Understory keep the source with it? I'd love the published PDF or site to carry a footnote back to where it came from.
the multi-parent subnote thing didnt click til i actually tried it, kept expecting drag to move the note not just link it
the "same note under multiple parents" thing is clever, wiki links are exactly why I quit obsidian lol. how does that look in the markdown files tho? like if I open the folder in another editor does it still make sense
About Understory Notes on Product Hunt
“Notes that tell the tale”
Understory Notes launched on Product Hunt on October 12th, 2026 and earned 80 upvotes and 6 comments, placing #14 on the daily leaderboard. Understory is a Mac notes app for people who take notes in order to write something. Collect notes as you read, arrange them into an outline, and draft each section with your research beside it. Then publish as a PDF, Rich Text, Markdown or a website.
Understory Notes was featured in Productivity (663.6k followers), Writing (59.4k followers) and Notes (8.4k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 188.2k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted Understory Notes?
Understory Notes was hunted by Allen Ussher. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
Want to see how Understory Notes stacked up against nearby launches in real time? Check out the live launch dashboard for upvote speed charts, proximity comparisons, and more analytics.
Allen Ussher
Hey Product Hunt 👋 I’m Allen, the maker of Understory.
Networked notes apps usually make you connect ideas with wiki-style links, which gets tedious fast. I’ve spent two years and at least half a dozen UIs looking for a better way.
In Understory, you link notes by placing them. Put one note beneath another and it becomes a subnote, and the two are connected. The result looks like an outline, with one difference: the same note can be a subnote of as many notes as you like. That makes it a network, shown as a tree, and it replaces both folders and most links.
Related notes end up next to each other, forming neighborhoods of ideas. And because a note can live in several neighborhoods, it works like a portal: follow it and you step from one into another. That’s where you spot connections you didn’t know were there.
Mac only, for now
Free to try, one-time purchase, no subscription
No account, and your notes can be plain Markdown files
It’s a different way to organize notes, so it takes a little use to click. Once it does, you stop filing and linking and just put ideas where they belong. I’m working on more videos to explain it. In the meantime, I’d love your feedback: what made sense right away, and what didn’t?
Allen