A mindmapping tool
I use mind maps whenever I need to organise information, for example when studying for courses that primarily involve declarative knowledge or when preparing a speech or presentation.
I have tried drawing mind maps by hand, but I quickly ran into some important limitations: I cannot use the page real estate efficiently, re-organise the map’s structure, change the order of the branches, insert images, or easily share copies of the map, just to cite a few.
I thus tried several mind-mapping softwares over the course of several years. Each of them had one or more issues:
- Missing features
- Too many features
- Crappy UI
- Unnecessary AI
- Monthly subscription
- Mandatory sign-up
- Requires a constant internet connection
- Worked fine but was bought by Enshittify Inc.™ and turned into slopware
I also lack the skills to code my own mind-mapping tool, and my limited attempts at frontend development were enough to put me off it for good. A portrait of me resorting to vibe-coding.
So I recently set my integrity aside and… I asked Claude.
Suffice it to say, I was happy with the result. I now have a mind-mapping tool that checks all my boxes:
- no sign up
- no fees
- decent UI
- platform-agnostic
- keyboard navigation
- support for images
- connections between branches
- rearrangeable branches
- works offline
- export to PDF
- import/export to and from JSON
- progress saved across sessions
- no bloat, no data collection
A screenshot of the mind-mapping tool that Claude wrote, opened inside Brave.
The app is publicly accessible at /mindmap. It is packaged as a PWA, so it can be installed once and used offline; simply downloading the HTML page works just as well, and also provides access to the source code.