I feel a little embarrassed by how low-tech my response is: I use TextEdit for notes! I think it works great. It’s full, not semi, WYSIWYG. I wrote an AppleScript service that I invoke with a keyboard shortcut (F16) whenever I want to write a note. It prompts for a date and time (autofilled with the current date and time), creates an HTML file at the proper place in the filesystem, opens it in TextEdit, and inserts the provided date and time.
I only use TextEdit for notes and journal entries in my Zettelkasten-like personal hypertext system (and yes I insert hyperlinks between relevant notes in addition to tags). Longer-form one-off writing projects, formal letters, etc., are done in other apps (Scrivener, Word, etc.).
Years ago, the DEVONthink developers quickly implemented a feature request of mine (or bug fix, depending on your point of view) so that I could do things the way I wanted, which was very helpful.