<h1>Introducing Fluster: Rust powered academic note taking with integrated AI</h1>
<p><strong>TLDR</strong>: I quit my job 3+ years ago to fix a mistake made in some of Einstein’s earliest work (my background is in astrophysics, not software, although that was my career path), and over the course of this pursuit I built a <em>prettyyy</em> sweet note taking application for personal use. I’ve since rewrote it in Rust via Tauri, and I’m releasing it as a forever free and open source tool for students, academics, developers, and pretty much anyone that needs a more complete note taking application.</p>
<h2>What is Fluster?</h2>
<p><img src="https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--yoKQhO7u--/f_auto/v1752159929/ugc/content_2a02469f-55d5-4d33-8659-60d550b9f82e?_a=BAMClqZW0" alt="simple_dashboard"></p>
<p>Since this post is written specifically for my fellow developers, I’m assuming most are familiar with <a href="https://mdxjs.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">mdx</a>. If you’re not, mdx is an amazing ecosystem of tools that allow embedding React components directly in your markdown notes. Fluster takes full advantage of this, providing user’s with a set of pre-defined components and, in the near future (August-ish), allowing them to extend the set of pre-defined components with those developed either by the community or locally.</p>
<p>Because Fluster relies on MDX and not markdown, Fluster can provide user’s with components for tasks more academic than other options, giving users the ability to create interactive 2d and 3d plots, embed task lists, make parts of their content truly standout with admonitions, cards, grids and more. Once the plugin feature is supported in the coming weeks, the potential for end users will be limitless… with all components taking advantage of the rust based architecture through the provided hooks, utility methods and classes.</p>
<p><em><strong>That’s great you’re planning to support plugins, but what does Fluster support right now?</strong></em></p>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Feature</th>
<th>Status</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Mdx</td>
<td>Stable</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Bibliography Manager</td>
<td>Stable</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Snippets Database</td>
<td>Stable</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Equations Database</td>
<td>Stable</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Completely Local Semantic Search</td>
<td>Stable</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Task Manager</td>
<td>Stable</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>User defined dictionary</td>
<td>Stable</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Customizable Formatted Citations</td>
<td>Stable</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Embedded, offline documentation</td>
<td>Stable</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Interactive Plotting</td>
<td>In progress, will be finished within a week</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Integrated Monaco Editor</td>
<td>Stable (vim mode available next week)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Jupyter Support</td>
<td>In progress, up next after plotting</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Completely Local AI Chat</td>
<td>Stable (RAG in progress)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Pdf Viewer</td>
<td>Stable, but will be extended</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Tabular Data</td>
<td>Architecture in place</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>CLI</td>
<td>Incomplete</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h2>Technical Details</h2>
<p>Fluster is built with <a href="https://v2.tauri.app" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">Tauri</a>, an amazing framework for building cross platform applications with Rust. All of the heavy lifting from the original, browser based version of Fluster has been migrated to Rust… or at least it all will be once the remaining features are migrated. This architecture gives Fluster the opportunity to utilize plugins based purely on web technology, opening the door to far more developers and significantly reducing the learning curve required to start building Fluster plugins.</p>
<p>Fluster also offloads pretty much anything I thought might be useful for other developers to the <code>@fluster.io/dev</code> package, available on npm. The documentation for this package is sorely lacking, but this will be taken care of when the plugin feature is implemented, by August 2025. Once this plugin feature is in place, extending the supported mdx components will require nothing more than building your package, either locally or hosted on Github and running a simple cli command to add it to your local plugins library.</p>
<h2>I’m Interested, How Do I Get Started?</h2>
<p>First, visit the releases page at <a href="https://github.com/flusterIO/fluster/releases" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">github.com/flusterIO/fluster/releases</a>, and download the file for your operating system; bonus points if you’re on a Windows or a Linux system and can help point out bugs on those systems.</p>
<p>After installing the application, and white-listing it in the settings app if you’re on a mac, launch the app at which time you’ll be greeted by a set of onboarding screens, walking you through the rest of the setup.</p>
<p>During this onboarding process Fluster will create a LanceDB instance, enabling a completely local vector database. Fluster will also download the AI models it requires for semantic search and AI chat features. Unfortunately, as I’m releasing this app early due to my living situation, there’s currently no progress meter for this download, so you’ll just have to be patient before using any of Fluster’s AI features. This is on my short list of things to resolve, but when you work 95% of the time offline without access to documentation, some things get pushed back.</p>
<p>From here, for my developers, I’m sure all I really need to tell you is where to find the docs. Simply open the command palette with <code>cmd+p</code> and select <code>Documentation</code>. There’s a <em>getting started</em> guide in this documentation that will walk you through everything, from choosing where to keep your notes, to setting up a bibliography, to setting up Jupyter integration (coming <em>by</em> August 2025).</p>
<h2>About Me</h2>
<p>My name’s Andrew. As I’ve mentioned, 3 years ago I quit my job to pursue a modified model of relativity after having a realization regarding some of Einstein’s earliest work.  The model has turned out phenomenally well, but it reaches some controversial conclusions: gravity is a repulsive force. <em>You</em> try getting that past peer review; so instead I took an alternative route and built an entire note taking ecosystem just to draw attention to this model. It makes too many accurate predictions to be wrong, with several falling well within measurement error that are completely unaccounted for by Einstein’s model, yet peer review wants nothing to do with a repulsive model of gravity.</p>
<p>After giving up my job to work on this model, I’ve since been homeless for more than 3 years. Not like the ‘live in a hotel’ type of homeless… like the ‘I haven’t washed my clothes with soap in a year because I can’t afford laundry’ type of homeless. I know it sounds ridiculous for a homeless guy to claim to have resolved a mistake made by Einstein, but if you do find either this application useful or the modified model of relativity interesting, please consider sharing! I’m the furthest thing from attention starved… I hate the idea of attention seeking, but that’s really the only way I’m going to get out of this living situation, and this model needs to be put in front of the larger physics community. The entire model is based upon a single <strong>mathematically equivalent</strong> modification to special relativity which in turn gives multiple directly observed quantities to well within measurement error… via a relationship that special and general relativity say doesn’t exist.</p>
<p>If you’re interested in the model, you can see my notes on the model on the documentation site for the previous browser based version of Fluster at <a href="https://ulld.vercel.app/myWork" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">ulld.vercel.app/myWork</a>.</p>
<p>And yes… now that this app is complete I’m very, very much looking for work. ~10 years experience overall, familiar with Go, Rust, Typescript, Dart, Python and a wee bit of Lua.</p>
<p><img src="https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--LPYbc543--/f_auto/v1752159963/ugc/content_d2e212e3-43cc-42bf-9a71-14aa1e4f33c9?_a=BAMClqZW0" alt="snippets_page_with_panel"></p>

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Fluster is a new open source note taking application built with Rust and Tauri, designed specifically for academic and research use. It supports MDX for embedding interactive components, includes features like bibliography management, local semantic search, AI chat capabilities, and task management. The application runs completely offline with local AI models and vector database, targeting students, academics, and developers who need advanced note taking functionality beyond basic markdown editors.