slog.im

What it is

Slog is a local-first Markdown note-taking and knowledge base app, positioned somewhat like a mix of Obsidian, Logseq, and Typora. It emphasizes the Markdown writing experience while also offering bidirectional links, backlinks, and graph view for organizing knowledge. The official site clearly states that notes are stored on the local device and are not uploaded to servers, so users retain ownership of their content.

Core features

Editing is a major focus for Slog. It includes WYSIWYG Markdown, live preview, code highlighting, draggable tables, source mode, read-only mode, wide-screen mode, and a Zen focus mode. For knowledge management, it supports bidirectional links, Backlinks, Frontmatter, tags, a right-side panel, quick switching, and graph view, making it suitable for maintaining a personal knowledge base, work notes, a Prompt library, or a reusable skills library. On the AI side, it provides interface information for optional AI writing, AI Chat, and custom AI, but the crawled text does not specify the model source, usage quota, privacy handling, or pricing.

Pricing and deployment

Slog is currently free. The official site says optional paid features or plans may be introduced in the future, with terms disclosed in advance. The product is a local desktop app and supports Windows 10/11, macOS 11+ on Apple Silicon and Intel, as well as Linux via .deb and AppImage. The text does not show any cloud sync, self-hosting, team workspace, or web version.

Pros and cons

Its strengths are being local-first, using plain-text Markdown, offering cross-platform support, and providing a complete set of knowledge-linking features. Since it is currently free, it also offers good value. The rewrite of key modules in Rust also suggests a focus on performance. Its limitations are the lack of common enterprise software capabilities: no team collaboration, permissions, audit logs, SSO, third-party integrations, API, or compliance certifications are mentioned. The terms also state that the official provider is not responsible for data loss, so users must handle backups themselves.

Who it is for and access from China

Slog is better suited to individual developers, researchers, content creators, product managers, and others who need local knowledge management. It is less suitable as an enterprise-grade collaborative knowledge base. The crawled text does not provide information about access from China, so download availability and AI feature usability need to be tested in practice. If you have requirements around networking, payments, or team collaboration, you may want to compare it with SiYuan, Obsidian, Logseq, Notion, or Feishu Wiki.