5.6 KiB
Silver Bullet
Silver Bullet (SB) is an extensible, open source personal knowledge
platform. At its core it’s a clean markdown-based writing/note taking
application that stores your 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. This makes it a simple tool for
Personal Knowledge Management.
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.
For more in-depth information, an interactive demo, and links to more
background, check out the Silver Bullet website
(published from this repo’s website/ folder).
Or checkout these two videos:
- A Tour of some of Silver Bullet’s features — spoiler alert: it’s cool.
- A look the SilverBullet architecture — spoiler alert: it’s plugs all the way down.
Features
- Free and open source. Silver Bullet is MIT licensed.
- The truth is in the markdown. Silver Bullet doesn’t use proprietary file formats. It keeps its data as plain markdown files on disk. While SB uses a database for indexing and caching some indexes, 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.
- One 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.
- Extend it your way. SB is highly extensible with plugs, and you can customize it to your liking and your workflows.
Installing Silver Bullet
Installing Deno
Silver Bullet is built using Deno. To install Deno on Linux or Mac run:
curl -fsSL https://deno.land/install.sh | sh
This will install Deno into ~/.deno/bin, add this folder to your PATH in
your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc file.
To install Deno on Windows (using Powershell) run:
irm https://deno.land/install.ps1 | iex
Install Silver Bullet
With Deno installed (see instruction above), run:
deno install -f --name silverbullet -A --unstable https://get.silverbullet.md
This will install silverbullet into your ~/.deno/bin folder (which should
already be in your path if you installed Deno following the previous
instructions).
To run Silver Bullet 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:
silverbullet <pages-path>
By default, SB will bind to port 3000 on all interfaces. To specify a
different address or port to listen on, use the --hostname and --port
options. By default SB doesn’t add authentication, to add
basic password authentication (BasicAuth), pass the --user flag (e.g.
--user pete:1234 for username pete and password 1234).
Once downloaded and booted, SB will print out a URL to open SB in your browser (spoiler alert: by default this will be http://localhost:3000 ).
#protip: If you have a PWA enabled browser (like any browser based on Chromium) hit that little button right of the location bar to install SB, and give it its own window frame (sans location bar) and desktop/dock icon. At last the PWA has found its killer app.
Upgrading Silver Bullet
Simply run this:
silverbullet upgrade
And restart Silver Bullet. You should be good to go.
Troubleshooting
If you upgraded to the new Deno-based Silver Bullet from an old version, you may
have to use the silverbullet fix <pages-path> command to flush out your old
database and plugs. Plugs will likely need to be updated.
Developing Silver Bullet
Silver Bullet is written in TypeScript and built on top of the excellent CodeMirror 6 editor component. Additional UI is built using React.js. ParcelJS is used to build both the front-end and back-end bundles. The server backend runs as a HTTP server on node.js using express.
To prepare the initial web and plug build run:
deno task build
To symlink silverbullet to your locally checked-out version, run:
deno task install
You can then run the server in “watch mode” (automatically restarting when you change source files) with:
deno task watch-server <PATH-TO-YOUR-SPACE>
After this initial build, it's convenient to run three commands in parallel (in separate terminals):
deno task watch-web
deno task watch-server <PATH-TO-YOUR-SPACE>
deno task watch-plugs
Feedback
If you (hypothetically) find bugs or have feature requests, post them in our issue tracker. Would you like to contribute? Check out the code, and the issue tracker as well for ideas on what to work on.