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# Silver Bullet
## Markdown as a platform
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Silver Bullet (SB) is highly-extensible, [open source](https://github.com/silverbulletmd/silverbullet) **personal knowledge management** software. Indeed, thats fancy language for “a note taking app with links.”
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At its core, SB is a Markdown editor that stores _pages_ (notes) as plain markdown files in a folder referred to as a _space_. Pages can be cross-linked using the `[[link to other page]]` syntax. However, once you leverage its various extensions (called _plugs_) it can feel more like a _knowledge playground_, allowing you to annotate, combine and query your accumulated knowledge in creative ways, specific to you. To get a good feel for it, [watch this video](https://youtu.be/RYdc3UF9gok).
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Cool, no?
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What does Silver Bullet look like? Well, have a look around. **Youre looking at it at this very moment!** 🤯
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Note that what youre looking at is not a fully functional version, because the _back-end is read-only_. That said, it should give you some feel for what its like to use SB before making the commitment of running a single `npx` command (see below) to download and run it locally in its fully functioning mode.
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So, feel free to make some edits in this space. Dont worry, you wont break anything, nothing is saved (just reload the page to see).
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Here are some things to try:
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* Click on the page name at the top, or hit `Cmd-k` (Mac) or `Ctrl-k` (Linux and Windows) to open the **page switcher**. Type the a name of a non-existing page to create it (although it wont save in this environment).
* Click on the run button (top right) or hit `Cmd-/` (Mac) or `Ctrl-/` (Linux and Windows) to open the **command palette** (note not all command will work in this quasi read-only mode).
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* Select some text and hit `Alt-m` to highlight it, or `Cmd-b` (Mac) or `Ctrl-b` to make it bold.
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* Click a link somewhere in this page, to navigate there.
* Start typing `[[` somewhere to insert a page link (with completion).
* [ ] Tap this box 👈 to mark this task as done.
* Start typing `:party` to trigger the emoji picker 🎉
* Type `/` somewhere in the text to invoke a **slash command**.
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* Open this site on your phone or tablet and… it just works!
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## Explore more
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Click on the links below to explore various aspects of Silver Bullet more in-depth:
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[[🤯 Features]]
[[💡 Inspiration]]
[[🔌 Plugs]]
[[🔨 Development]]
[[🗺 Roadmap]]
More of a video person? Heres two to get you started:
* [A Tour of Silver Bullets features](https://youtu.be/RYdc3UF9gok) — spoiler alert: its cool.
* [A look the SilverBullet architecture](https://youtu.be/mXCGau05p5o) — spoiler alert: its plugs all the way down.
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## Principles
Some core principles that underly Silver Bullets philosophy:
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* **The truth is in the markdown.** Markdown is simply text files, stored on disk. Nothing fancy. No proprietary formats or lock in. While SB uses a database for indexing and caching some data, all of that can be rebuilt from its markdown source at any time.
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* **What you see is what it is.** No magic or hidden content.
* **Single mode.** SB doesnt have a separate view and edit mode. Youre always in edit mode, and you like it that way.
* **Extend it your way**. SB is highly extensible, and you can customize it your liking and your workflows.
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## Running Silver Bullet
Do you like what youre seeing? Are you ready to take that next step? Install it yourself locally or on your server! Its free.
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To run a release version, you need to have a recent version of [node.js installed](https://nodejs.org/en/) (16+). Silver Bullet has only been tested on MacOS and Linux thus far. It could also run on Windows, let me know if it does.
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To install and run SB, create a folder for your pages (can be empty or an existing folder with `.md` files) and run the following command in your terminal:
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npx @silverbullet/server <path-to-folder>
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Optionally you can use the `—port` argument to specify a HTTP port (defaults to `3000`) and you can pass a `—password` flag to require a password to access. Note this is a rather weak security mechanism, so its recommended to add additional layers of security on top of this if you run this on a public server somewhere (at least add TLS). Personally I run it on a tiny Linux VM on my server at home, and use a VPN (Tailscale) to access it from outside my home.
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Thats it! Enjoy.
If you (hypothetically) find bugs or have feature requests, post them in [our issue tracker](https://github.com/silverbulletmd/silverbullet). Want to contribute? [Check out the code](https://github.com/silverbulletmd/silverbullet).