SilverBullet aims to be your **workshop for the mind**: a creative [[Spaces]] where you collect, create and expand your personal knowledge, while also letting you constantly evolve the tools you use to do so.
While you _can_ use SilverBullet as just a note taking application that stores notes in plain [[Markdown]] files on disk, it becomes truly powerful in the hands of more technical power users. By leveraging [[Metadata]] annotations, its [[Objects]] infrastructure, [[Live Queries]] and [[Live Templates]], SilverBullet becomes a powerful [[End-User Programming]] tool, enabling you to quickly develop various types of ad-hoc knowledge systems.
SilverBullet is implemented as an _open-source_, _self-hosted_, _offline-capable_ web application (PWA). In order to use it, you have to self host it: that is, you need to run the web server either on your own machine or in the cloud somewhere. See [[Install]] for instructions.
You may have been told there is _no such thing_ as a [silver bullet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_bullet).
Alright then. Beyond the fancy, aspirational vision-y talk. What does this thing actually do and how does it work? You know... features, we need a feature list!
* Runs in any modern browser (including on mobile) as a [[PWA]] in two [[Client Modes]] (_online_ and _synced_ mode), where the _synced mode_ enables **100% offline operation**, keeping a copy of content in the browser’s local ([IndexedDB](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/IndexedDB_API)) database, syncing back to the server when a network connection is available.
* Provides an enjoyable [[Markdown]] writing experience with a clean UI, rendering text using [[Live Preview|live preview]], further **reducing visual noise** while still providing direct access to the underlying markdown syntax.
* Supports wiki-style **page linking** using the `[[page link]]` syntax. Incoming links are indexed and appear as [[Linked Mentions]] at the bottom of the pages linked to thereby providing _bi-directional linking_.
* Provides a platform for [end-user programming](https://www.inkandswitch.com/end-user-programming/) through its support for [[Objects]], [[Live Queries]] and [[Live Templates]], allowing to make parts of your pages _dynamic_.
* **Self-hosted**: you own your data. All content is stored as plain files in a folder on disk. Back up, sync, edit, publish, script with any additional tools you like.
On this site, everything is editable, just none of it syncs back (successfully) to the server. You are editing a local copy of this website, so changes do persist locally. It’s not a perfect rendition of the actual SilverBullet experience, but pretty close.
* Click on the page picker (book icon) icon at the top right, or hit `Cmd-k` (Mac) or `Ctrl-k` (Linux and Windows) to open the **page switcher**. Type the name of a non-existent page to create it (although it won’t save in this environment).
* Click on the terminal button (top right) or hit `Cmd-/` (Mac) or `Ctrl-/` (Linux and Windows) to open the **command palette** (note that not all commands will work in this mode).
* Select some text and hit `Alt-m` to ==highlight== it, or `Cmd-b` (Mac) or `Ctrl-b` (Windows/Linux) to make it **bold**, or `Cmd-i` (Mac) or `Ctrl-i` (Windows/Linux) to make it _italic_.
browser or recent version of Safari)? Click on that little icon to the right of your location bar that says “Install SilverBullet” to give SB its own window frame and desktop icon, like it is a stand-alone app (not particularly useful on silverbullet.md, but definitely do this once you install it yourself). Now, unplug your network cable and reload the page. It still works!
Where things get _really_ interesting is when using features like [[Live Queries]] that allow you to query all types of [[Objects]] indexed based on the pages in your [[Spaces]].
Let’s explore this with a meta example of using this functionality for this very website. All pages in this space that represent a [[🔌 Plugs|plug]] are tagged with the `#plug` tag. Now, if we would want to render a list of all plugs in one place using the [[template/plug]] template, we can simply do this as follows:
And it’s not just pages that can be queried, there’s a large variety of queriable sources and you can define your own via tags. Examples include `task`s, `page`s, `tag`s, and `link`s. The sky is the limit. See [[Objects]] and [[Live Queries]] for more information.
If you (hypothetically) find bugs (we prefer to call them “features”) or have feature requests, post them in [our issue tracker](https://github.com/silverbulletmd/silverbullet/issues). Want to contribute? [Check out the code](https://github.com/silverbulletmd/silverbullet).
