He announced he killed Notion and open-sourced it, and the comments immediately ask: where’s the repo?

On November 2, Winston Gao posted on X with a bold claim: 'We just killed Notion, and open-sourced it.' The product he released is called Terminus Notes, and its positioning is straightforward: keep the parts of Notion that work well, and remove AI credits and the sidebar that makes people lose their way. The official description is 100% free, 100% open source, and 100% customizable. Data can be exported at any time, and you can point it at your own Claude. Product entry point: notes.apps.terminus.build.

Notion is a note-taking, document, and knowledge-base tool; AI credits are usage credits for Notion AI. The pain point Terminus Notes targets is not complicated: users do not want their notes locked inside a SaaS product, and they do not want to pay repeatedly for AI features. It makes data export and connecting your own model selling points, which appeals to people with a developer background. For ordinary users, it can be understood as a lighter note-taking app where they choose their own data and AI entry points.

In the comments, one user tried it and said 'it is actually usable,' while others praised the product as cool. Someone suggested adding an agent interface to the sidebar so users can connect their own agent, like an IDE for a knowledge base. These comments point to the same need: note-taking tools are not just for writing; they also need to connect to workflows. On the other side, the most-asked question was the repository link. One person asked directly, 'Were can I find the repo,' another asked, 'open source but no repo,' and someone else called it clickbait with no repo. In public replies, the author did not provide a repository address; he only thanked people and said he would keep updating. The words 'open source' spread faster on X than the repository was created, and that contrast is striking.

Someone asked whether good ideas should not make money. Winston replied that good ideas should make money, but when an idea is no longer good, one should stop making money from it; sometimes early profit comes from a good idea, and later profit comes from monopoly. This answer shows his attitude toward SaaS pricing models, and it also explains why Terminus Notes puts free and exportable first. But the credibility of an open-source claim ultimately depends on the repository, license, and deployment documentation. For developers, a demo video and product page are not enough; where the code is, whether it can be self-hosted, and whether the data format is open are the criteria for judgment. For ordinary users, free and exportable are real value, while stability and data security need time to verify. Notion will not die because of one tweet, and open source will not become true because of one slogan.