Bamboo - Markdown notes with AI under your control
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Bamboo is a Markdown-first notes app for people who want a simple, portable workspace for ideas, documents, tasks, research, and personal knowledge. It combines a focused editor, collections, wiki links, web clipping, import/export, backups, and cross-device sync across iPhone, iPad, and Mac. AI is optional and controlled by you: connect supported providers, choose your model, and draft, rewrite, summarize, or brainstorm inside your notes.
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The wiki links and web clipping combo is genuinely useful for the kind of messy research notes I usually have scattered across five apps. Sync between iPhone and Mac has been smooth so far, which is more than I can say for most markdown editors I've tried.
The wiki links actually feel useful here, not just a gimmick — I linked a few notes together and the backlinks view made everything click. Love that the AI stuff is opt-in too.
The wiki links feel really natural in the editor, way smoother than the script I cobbled together in Obsidian. Glad the AI is opt-in instead of shoved in your face.
Curious how the AI credits or provider billing works if I bring my own key, do you charge any markup or is it purely pass-through to whatever API the note uses?
Bamboo
@kemalcakandg84 If you bring your own key, it is pass-through. Bamboo does not add a markup, resell AI credits, or bill per token. Your API key is encrypted and stored locally on your device. Requests go directly to the provider/model you configure, and any usage cost is billed by that provider to your account. Bamboo Pro unlocks app features; it does not include or surcharge AI usage.
The wiki links inside the editor feel really considered, not just bolted on like most notes apps. Love that AI is opt-in and per-provider too, that's how it should be.
The wiki links and collections combo feels really natural for keeping research connected across devices. Glad the AI is optional and uses your own keys instead of being baked in.
Preserving [[Note Title]] links and shipping TextBundle is exactly what makes an exit feel non-painful. Since the links stay title-based rather than path-based though, on import into something like Obsidian two notes that share a title would both match [[Foo]] — does the export include a manifest or enforce unique titles/IDs so a link cannot silently resolve to the wrong note?
Finally tried Bamboo on my iPad and the wiki links feel right at home, especially jumping between research notes and project docs without losing my place.
The iCloud-only sync is a smart privacy call, but curious about the messy edge case: if I edit the same note on my iPhone and Mac while one of them was offline for a while, does the merge actually reconcile conflicting paragraphs, or is it more of a last-write-wins overwrite? That's usually where markdown-in-iCloud setups quietly lose content.
Bamboo
@galdayan That’s a very fair concern, and I want to be transparent about the limitation here.
Bamboo uses iCloud sync and syncs the full note content. By default, the conflict model is last-write-wins. That is a tradeoff: it keeps the app simple, native, private, and independent from our own backend, but it also means Bamboo is not a real-time collaborative editor with full CRDT-style conflict resolution.
We do try to make the common editing case safer. If you are actively editing a note and a newer synced version arrives from another device, Bamboo dynamically calculates a patch and attempts to merge changes at the paragraph level instead of simply replacing your current text.
We chose that tradeoff intentionally, and we’ll keep improving conflict handling over time.