Building Markdown Locker with Grok

Markdown Locker started as a simple idea: keep notes as plain files on disk, and put a writing partner next to them that can actually see those files. No second database. No account required to capture a thought.

We built it Grok-first. Defaults point at xAI. Demos and product copy assume a Grok key. That is a stance, not a wall — any OpenAI-compatible key still works in Think. The point is clarity about who we optimise for, not a hard lock.

Local-first is the constraint

Everything lands in ~/Documents/Markdown Locker. Spotlight can find it. You can open it in any editor. MiLo reads what is on disk when you ask — not a shadowed copy in someone else’s cloud.

That constraint shaped the product. Capture is fast because it is just writing a file. Explore is search over a folder. Workspace is a two-panel studio over the same folder: living document on the left, conversation on the right.

Conversation is not a document

Early versions of Plan with AI still wanted to answer in outlines. That is the wrong surface. Chat is for talking. Structure belongs on the page. The protocol is simple: short human lines in the bubble; full markdown only inside a document block that the client applies to the left.

Grounding follows the same honesty. MiLo knows the product. It does not invent your projects or metrics. If a note is not in the Locker, it says so — then offers to draft as new work.

Still shipping

Voice in, continuous conversation, stronger retrieval, and Word itself are all part of the same loop: write in the product, publish from the product, keep the source of truth as files you own.

If you are building with Grok and care about local notes, this is the lane we are in.