IntroductionSilverBullet is a note-taking application optimized for people with a hacker mindset. We all take notes. There’s a million note taking applications out there. Literally. Wouldn’t it be nice to have one where your notes are more than plain tex
Yes, I have used it for many months. It has been the best solution for my use case for a while. Which is tasks, shopping, planning (trips, …), recipes, and a simple knowledgebase. It was the offline support that set it apart from some other solutions
I have the files in a syncthing folder, so I can access the files without running silverbullet
My biggest problem is keeping up with all the changes. Zef made some youtube videos that are helpful
I use it and love it. Having the metadata (tags, dates, …) of your pages available to query and organize is awesome.
I also love the tagged tasks feature.
Interesting, but what does this solve what Bookstack does not solve? I mean sure, it looks nice and hacky and all that. But if i am going to host some note thingy, https://www.bookstackapp.com/ is right there and apparently the dev nowadays lives from the thing (which is nice i guess). Not to belittle your project in anyway, even if something like your thing would exist exactly as that its still commendable but i am already running Bookstack and this seems to add anything to any use case i could think off.
Looks really kool. Reminds me of tiddlywiki but yet totally different. The authentication is very briefly touched upon. What kind of auth is it? Maybe more robust to just use http auth via caddy?
This looks awesome and exactly what I have been looking for.
One question about implementation just out of curiosity, is there any database? I’m worried that when it gets to hundreds or thousands of pages querying things becomes slow if it’s just scanning files.
I said hundreds or thousands, I don’t expect to be creating hundreds of thousands of pages, but from your reply on the other thread SQLite should be more than capable of handling this scale.
Nice knowing that you have close to a thousand and it’s still fine. It will take me a long time to get to that amount of pages, but if I can get started with this it seems like an awesome way of storing knowledge bases, so I expect it will grow quite rapidly as I migrate all of my different things into it.
SQLite should be more than enough, I can’t find the file on the space folder though, is it created inside the docker container on server startup? Is there a reason not to store it in space so it doesn’t need to be regenerated each time?
It’s .silverbullet.db in the root of your space folder. Note that because there’s no schemas in SB, SQLite is used as a fancy key-value store and many queries become somewhat (but not very) optimized table scans. In this SQLite file you’ll see a “kv” table that contains everything.
I feel like facepalming myself to death for having asked such a stupid question before running an ls -a on the folder.
One last question, I’ve been reading on Plugs because there’s one thing that I use regularly that I think doesn’t exist and want to know if it would be possible for me to implement, it’s called plantuml. Essentially it’s a plug that would act on a specific block of code, like the latex one, and would use POST the code to a configurable url, get an image as return and display that instead.
Yes this is doable, with the caveat that I have not invested a lot of time in documenting all the plug APIs etc. You can have a look at the mermaid plug to get a sense of how this can be done, it will be similar except that you — indeed — may end up having to post something to a URL somewhere rather than render the thing on-the-fly with a JavaScript library you load externally: https://github.com/silverbulletmd/silverbullet-mermaid
Actually mermaid seems to be able to do all I’m doing with plantuml and syntax is very similar, might give that a try before since that one would also work in offline mode.
With the rise of these .md based personal knowledge database applications it would be amazing to see some conversion software.
I understand that each has their special sauce. Does anyone know what would be the most difficult part about building a tool like that to copy in Logseq data to SB for example?
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This looks interesting; is anyone here using it?
Well I have for the last two years, but I’m biased because I wrote it 🤓
Yes, I have used it for many months. It has been the best solution for my use case for a while. Which is tasks, shopping, planning (trips, …), recipes, and a simple knowledgebase. It was the offline support that set it apart from some other solutions
I have the files in a syncthing folder, so I can access the files without running silverbullet
My biggest problem is keeping up with all the changes. Zef made some youtube videos that are helpful
I use it and love it. Having the metadata (tags, dates, …) of your pages available to query and organize is awesome. I also love the tagged tasks feature.
What’s a “hacker mindset” and why do you need one to use this app?
Update: The homepage explains “hacker mindset” by linking to the wiki article for hacker lol
I clicked on the link to “installation instructions” on your home page in a couple of different places and got the error “e.split is not a function”.
It works for me on the main page. The Installation link sends you to:https://silverbullet.md/Install
Thanks, your link worked for me.
Interesting, but what does this solve what Bookstack does not solve? I mean sure, it looks nice and hacky and all that. But if i am going to host some note thingy, https://www.bookstackapp.com/ is right there and apparently the dev nowadays lives from the thing (which is nice i guess). Not to belittle your project in anyway, even if something like your thing would exist exactly as that its still commendable but i am already running Bookstack and this seems to add anything to any use case i could think off.
Don’t all users of self-hosted personal knowledge management systems have a hacker mindset?
Looks really kool. Reminds me of tiddlywiki but yet totally different. The authentication is very briefly touched upon. What kind of auth is it? Maybe more robust to just use http auth via caddy?
It’s pretty simple. Supports a single username:password combo, issues a JWT in a cookie and that’s it.
But is there brute-force prevention mechanisms, e.g. delaying logins by a few seconds?
Why not something like syncthing and then just use a text editor you like?
If you know of any FOSS, offline editors for Android which can do what silverbullet can, drop a link.
I tried this, but couldn’t find a better editor as android app. The closest I got was Zettel notes. But silverbullet worked better
This looks awesome and exactly what I have been looking for.
One question about implementation just out of curiosity, is there any database? I’m worried that when it gets to hundreds or thousands of pages querying things becomes slow if it’s just scanning files.
That said, I have not tested this with hundreds of thousands of notes (I have close to a thousand myself). No performance issues there, but…
I said hundreds or thousands, I don’t expect to be creating hundreds of thousands of pages, but from your reply on the other thread SQLite should be more than capable of handling this scale.
Nice knowing that you have close to a thousand and it’s still fine. It will take me a long time to get to that amount of pages, but if I can get started with this it seems like an awesome way of storing knowledge bases, so I expect it will grow quite rapidly as I migrate all of my different things into it.
Yes, it’s using SQLite under the hood in Online mode and IndexedDB in the browser in Sync mode.
SQLite should be more than enough, I can’t find the file on the space folder though, is it created inside the docker container on server startup? Is there a reason not to store it in space so it doesn’t need to be regenerated each time?
It’s .silverbullet.db in the root of your space folder. Note that because there’s no schemas in SB, SQLite is used as a fancy key-value store and many queries become somewhat (but not very) optimized table scans. In this SQLite file you’ll see a “kv” table that contains everything.
I feel like facepalming myself to death for having asked such a stupid question before running an
ls -aon the folder.One last question, I’ve been reading on Plugs because there’s one thing that I use regularly that I think doesn’t exist and want to know if it would be possible for me to implement, it’s called plantuml. Essentially it’s a plug that would act on a specific block of code, like the latex one, and would use POST the code to a configurable url, get an image as return and display that instead.
Yes this is doable, with the caveat that I have not invested a lot of time in documenting all the plug APIs etc. You can have a look at the mermaid plug to get a sense of how this can be done, it will be similar except that you — indeed — may end up having to post something to a URL somewhere rather than render the thing on-the-fly with a JavaScript library you load externally: https://github.com/silverbulletmd/silverbullet-mermaid
Actually mermaid seems to be able to do all I’m doing with plantuml and syntax is very similar, might give that a try before since that one would also work in offline mode.
Hey it is going to be 2 years old this week! 🎂
Hah! Didn’t realize. Indeed! Although apparently still called “noot” then.
Yeah, I noticed. Wonder what it means…
It’s a Dutch (I’m Dutch) pronunciation of the word “note”
Wow, this is super cool - saving this for when I finally spruce up my old desktop for a home server. You’re a talented person mate
With the rise of these .md based personal knowledge database applications it would be amazing to see some conversion software.
I understand that each has their special sauce. Does anyone know what would be the most difficult part about building a tool like that to copy in Logseq data to SB for example?
pandoc.org is probably what you are looking for, but you might have to create a custom reader/writer or find one on the internet.
Oh cool! I didn’t realize pandoc was extensible enough to deal with this kind of conversion. I’ll give it a look!
Or unification/interoperability even