jw_cook

1. Mostly use the mobile app, and take photos and upload observations directly from there. Local photo collection either isn't a priority or is backed up by their phone's cloud sync.

2. Mostly use inaturalist.org via a desktop browser, with either a standalone digital camera or mobile photos synced to desktop. Local filesystem (hopefully plus backups) is the source of truth.

I have been working on a desktop application[2] with a long-term goal of full bidirectional sync, and a secondary goal of offline usage. The current feature set is fairly modest and read-only, though, focusing on organizing local photos using data from iNat.

The iNat API certainly has some quirks and shortcomings, but in terms of usability it's uncommonly good compared to most biodiversity platforms. I maintain the python API client[1], which is used for data visualizations, doing useful things with your own observation data (which is how I got into it), Jupyter notebooks, Discord bots, and some research/education workflows.

My use case looks roughly like this: for a given project (as in hobby/DIY/learning, not professional work), I typically have general planning/reference notes in a markdown file synced across my devices via Nextcloud. Separately, for some individual tasks I might have comments about the initial problem, stuff I researched along the way, and the solution I ended up with. Or just thinking out loud, like you mentioned. Sometimes I'll take the effort to edit that info into my main project doc, but for the way I think, it's sometimes more convenient for me to have that kind of info associated with a specific task. When referring to it later, though, it's really handy to be able to use ripgrep (or other search tools) to search everything at once.