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 platform_, 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).
Note that what you’re 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 it’s 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.
* Click on the page title (`index` for this particular one) 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 won’t 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 commands will work in this quasi read-only mode).
* Hit `Cmd-p` (Mac) or `Ctrl-p` (Windows, Linux) to show a live preview for the current page on the side, if your brain doesn’t speak native Markdown yet.
* Open this site on your phone or tablet and… it just works!
* Are you using a browser with **PWA support** (e.g. any Chromium-based browser)? Click on that little icon to the right of your location bar that says “Install Silver Bullet” 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).
* Using SB’s powerful page indexing and **query mechanism** where part of pages are automatically rendered and kept up to date by querying various data sources (such as pages and their metadata, back links, tasks embedded in pages, and list items) with an SQL like syntax, rendered with handlebars templates.
In a regular SB installation, the body of this query 👆 (in between the placeholders) would automatically be kept up to date as new pages are added to the space that match the query. 🤯 Have a look at the [[template/plug]] _template_ (referenced in the `render` clause) to see how the results are rendered using handlebars syntax, and have a look at one of the linked pages to see how the _meta data_ is specified, which is subsequently used to query and render in this page. And to learn about the specific plug, of course.
* **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. If SB would ever go away, you can still read your pages with any text editor.
* **Single, distraction free mode.** SB doesn’t have a separate view and edit mode. It doesn’t have a “focus mode.” You’re always in focused edit mode, why wouldn’t you?
* **Keyboard oriented**. You can use SB fully using the keyboard, typin’ the keys.
For this you will 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.
To install and run SB, create a folder for your pages (it can be empty, or be an existing folder with `.md` files) and run the following command in your terminal:
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 it’s 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.
Once downloaded and booted, you will be provided with a URL to open SB in your browser (spoiler alert: by default this will be http://localhost:3000 ).
If you (hypothetically) find bugs 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).
