MSFE: a source-first Markdown editor framework that keeps original Markdown intact

The author, who has three years of experience building ProseMirror-based products, introduces MSFE (Markdown Source-First Editor), a framework aimed at fixing the underlying editor architecture of note-taking apps. They surveyed how popular note tools such as Notion, Obsidian, Logseq, and AFFiNE store content and edit it, grouping them into block/rich-text, source-first, and dual-editor approaches. They argue that converting from a document tree to Markdown and back is lossy, citing specific behaviors of prosemirror-markdown and Tiptap's Markdown extension, such as rewritten emphasis markers, renumbered lists, and silently dropped nodes. The article proposes storing complex blocks like tables and databases inside fenced code blocks so the Markdown remains readable and diff-friendly, while acknowledging the real syntax limitations of Markdown tested with micromark.