liiists

A list app that feels as simple as Apple Notes on first launch, but is way better IMHO :wink:

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What is this?

Lists for books, movies, restaurants, anything: the kind of app where you just want to write something down.

If you don’t like making lists in the first place, then this app probably isn’t for you.

I built the million-and-one-th list app because I’ve never found an option that works as well as a basic list in TextEdit. liiists is my attempt to iOS-ify what I love about the most basic approach, and take the opportunity to add one or two key things that I personally wanted from a list app. So, basically liiists has the following features:

  • You can make lists or checklists
  • All your lists sync to an iCloud folder automatically if you have iCloud
  • On other devices, all your lists are just simple markdown
  • On device AI lets you generate suggested additions to lists you already have
  • There’s a lightweight social layer: you can publish any list so that other users can see it, and you can discover other users’ lists.
  • There’s also a dev-first CLI/MCP experiment, but that’s just to try stuff out

Why

The most honest answer? Because I wanted an app that had the features I wanted (but just those features). Also true but less core: a list app is one of the most basic / canonical shapes a mobile app can take, so I figured it was a good starting point to learn the fundamentals of app development.

Design principles

  • Nothing-inspired look and feel, leveraging Dominik Martin’s awesome nothing-design-skill
  • Markdown is the contract. Every feature must work with plain .md files as the storage layer.
  • AI-native, not AI-dependent. The app is fully functional without AI. But I think the AI stuff is useful!
  • Meet users where they are. Share sheet, Siri, CLI, MCP server. Every surface that can push to a list should be able to.
  • No signup wall. The app is useful before you create an account. Sign-in only unlocks publishing public lists.

AI surface area

SurfaceUser typeHow it works
In-app “Add a bunch”EveryonePaste messy text, AI parses into clean list items
iOS Share SheetEveryoneShare a URL or article, AI extracts relevant items
Siri ShortcutsEveryoneVoice → list entry
CLI (liiists add)DevelopersPipe stdin, script it, alias it
Markdown syncAI power usersAny tool that writes files can write to lists
MCP serverAI power usersClaude Code, Codex, etc. push items programmatically

Stack

iOS in Swift/SwiftUI, Go for the CLI (single binary, easy Homebrew tap), TypeScript for the MCP server. All three read and write the same markdown spec, syncing through iCloud Drive by default with configurable paths for users who keep their lists elsewhere (Obsidian vaults, dotfiles repos).