I get the impression that the project here is not one that calls for exploration - "a simple note-taking app with a couple of screens". You can use a tech stack you already know well, the entity model is pretty obvious, you should be able to sit down and mostly just smash it out. You can make lots of little commits while doing that.

I have had interview projects that were much more open-ended and exploratory, and there, i would not expect to be cranking out neat atomic commits. But i don't think that's what they are doing here.