ProofNote

Why I built it

ProofNote began with a very ordinary problem: email is a poor place to present long mathematical explanations. Gmail does not render Markdown, so formulas, arguments, caveats, and supporting details quickly turn into dense blocks of text. I often had to simplify an explanation simply to keep the message readable, even when the mathematics itself deserved a clearer structure.

I wanted a format that could preserve the structure of a mathematical result without making the reader fight the presentation. That led to ProofNote: a way to separate the problem, result, reasoning, evidence, verification material, limitations, and references into a consistent note that can be rendered clearly and shared as an ordinary webpage or HTML file.

Designed for people and AI

Filling every structured field by hand would simply replace one inconvenience with another, so AI authoring became part of the design. ProofNote defines a canonical Solution Note Format 1.0 together with a simpler AI Authoring Profile. A model can produce the compact form, which ProofNote normalizes into the canonical structure before validation and rendering.

The aim is to make generated mathematical output something that can continue to be worked on rather than disposable text. A note can be exported, shared, and later given back to an AI or edited by hand when a proof, computation, explanation, or correction needs to change.

Diagnostics instead of “invalid JSON”

AI-generated mathematical JSON tends to fail in predictable but frustrating ways, especially when LaTeX backslashes and JSON escaping interact. ProofNote therefore does more than report that an import failed. Its validation pipeline separates JSON syntax, schema, content, and rendering problems, and can report where an error occurred, what likely caused it, and how it can be corrected.

For example, a raw LaTeX command such as \sqrt inside JSON can be recognized as a LaTeX escaping mistake rather than returned as an unexplained invalid escape. Schema mismatches, malformed content, and KaTeX rendering failures are handled at separate stages instead of collapsing into one generic error message.

Portable by design

ProofNote can run locally in a modern browser without requiring a server or network connection for normal use. Exported notes are self-contained HTML files with their required rendering assets embedded, so they can be read, archived, emailed, or opened elsewhere without depending on the ProofNote application itself.

The exported HTML also remains an ordinary editable artifact. If the underlying result changes or something later needs correction, the file can be revised again by hand or with AI rather than being treated as a frozen screenshot or static document.

From personal workflow to public tool

ProofNote began as a solution to my own mathematical communication workflow, but I later shared it in a community setting and received strong feedback on the format and the way the rendered notes could be used and revised.

The project is now released publicly under the MIT License. The current public version is v3.1.0-rc.1, with the editor, Solution Note Format 1.0, bilingual interface, diagnostics, examples, tests, and standalone HTML export published together in the repository.

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