Introduction

I started with the reddit post here.

From there, installed ollama and downloaded the recommended "qwen3-vl:8b".

But there was no easy way to interface with the model, so i found sn2md.

Using these two tools together, I was able to set up a really nice workflow for converting my .note files to .md

Hardware

x2 Xeon E5-2699, 125.8 GB RAM, RTX 3060 (12GB of vRam).

Software

Linux Mint 22.2, sn2md, ollama

Models Used

mirage335/Qwen-3-VL-8B-Instruct-virtuoso:latest 9.8 GB adelnazmy2002/Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct:Q4_K_M 3.3 GB adelnazmy2002/Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct:latest 6.1 GB qwen3-vl:8b 6.1 GB

Configuration

OLLAMA_KEEP_ALIVE=1 OLLAMA_NUM_PARALLEL=1 OLLAMA_GPU=1 ollama run <MODEL>

~/.config/sn2md.toml 

prompt="""
You are an OCR engine, not a writing assistant.

Task:
- Read the handwritten note in the image.
- Output the exact transcription of the text as plain markdown.

Critical constraints:
- Do NOT explain what you are doing.
- Do NOT think step-by-step.
- Do NOT describe, analyze, or comment on the note.
- Do NOT use phrases like "let's", "wait", "first line", "next line", "line X", "Got it", "I will adhere to the Precision & Conciseness Protocol.", or "step by step".
- Do NOT mention spellings or say how words are written.
- Do NOT repeat any single word more than twice in a row.
- If you notice yourself repeating a word or phrase, immediately stop and output your best single transcription of the whole note.
- Your entire response must be ONLY the final transcription text, nothing else.
"""