Yury Molodtsov Yury Molodtsov
About Projects Photos Shared

Startups comms, essays on tech and great curated links.

Strata is a Minimal Native Outliner for MacOS

Outliners are the superior tool for thought and I wanted a native option for MacOS.

May 30, 2026

Lead image for Strata is a Minimal Native Outliner for MacOS

Strata is a new outliner app for MacOS that I’ve built. It’s completely native and only 2.5 MB. You can get it here.

I wrote about outliners extensively in the past. An outliner is a text editor that organizes information in hierarchical nodes. You might have seen one if you ever used Workflowy, Dynalist, OmniOutliner, or Roam Research.

Outliner is a superior tool for thought. I find them most useful when I have to organize a lot of information or draft a complex article without a clear idea of where I’ll end up.

With Strata, I built the tool that I’ve always wanted for myself. Your document is basically a series of nested bullet points, and you can do a lot of things with them.

  • Each bullet point (or node) is a task you can complete
  • You can collapse nodes and all of their descendants
  • You can easily move them around
  • Or you can focus on a specific node and hide all others

The best part about outliners is that they’re extremely flexible. You can use Strata for note-taking, journaling, task management, writing, or all of these things combined. It’s malleable. Most closely, it resembles Workflowy, but works locally and it’s blazing fast.

If you want to try it, you can download the latest release from my GitHub here. If you used it, let me know what you think. What did you like? What can be improved? What features would you like to have?

Comment
software

Get the next edition

Subscribe for new editions of How They Became Known, featuring deep dives into how technology companies gain attention and establish legitimacy online.

Recent Posts

How beehiiv Sold the Morning Brew Playbook to Everyone

How beehiiv Sold the Morning Brew Playbook to Everyone

Tyler Denk helped build the machinery behind Morning Brew. Then he recruited two of its engineers, rebuilt the product as a SaaS, and made his own personality the heart of the company. The result is one of the creator economy’s fastest-growing companies. It is also a test of how far a founder’s personality can scale.

Aug 11, 2026
The Game of Consequences

The Game of Consequences

Consequences, a political strategy game on how well-intentioned policies collide with reality.

Jul 30, 2026
On Moral Panics

On Moral Panics

Moral panics are a recurring feature that signals fear of novelty and shifts in power.

Jul 6, 2026
How to Solve AI's Messaging Problem

How to Solve AI's Messaging Problem

Generative AI has a messaging problem. Can it be solved?

Jun 9, 2026
The Age of the Polymath

The Age of the Polymath

You don’t need to write code. You need to know what code can do.

May 14, 2026

Search