Introduction

SilverBullet 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 text files? Where your notes essentially become a database that you can query; that you can build custom knowledge applications on top of? A hackable notebook, if you will?

This is what SilverBullet aims to be.

Absolutely. You use SilverBullet to quickly jot things down. It’s a notes app after all. However, this is just the beginning. Gradually, you start to annotate your notes using Frontmatter. You realize: “Hey, this note represents a person, let me tag it as such.” Before you know it, you’re turning your notes into Objects. Then you learn that in SilverBullet you can Live Query these objects. Your queries grow into reusable Templates written using a powerful Template Language. You find more and more uses of these templates, for instance to create new pages, or widgets automatically added to your pages.

And then, before you know it — you realize you’re effectively building applications in your notes app. End-User Programming, y’all. It’s cool.

You may have been told there is no such thing as a silver bullet.

You were told wrong.

What is SilverBullet?

SilverBullet is open source personal knowledge management system implemented as an offline-capable web application (PWA). In order to use it, you have to self-host it: that is, you need to run a web server either on your own machine, somewhere on your network, or in the cloud somewhere. See our installation instructions. Yes, this requires a bit more work than downloading a desktop app. But you get a lot in return.

Features

  • SilverBullet is a web application and therefore instantly accessible wherever a (modern) web browser is available, without the need to install a 200mb Electron app, nor unreliable or proprietary sync setups.
  • SilverBullet is a PWA that supports two Client Modes: Client Modes#Online mode and Client Modes#Synced mode), where the synced mode enables 100% offline operation, keeping a copy of the content in the browser’s local (IndexedDB) database, syncing back to the server when a network connection is available.
  • Self-hosted: you own your data. Your space is stored as plain files in a folder on disk on your server. Back it up, sync, edit, publish, script it with any additional tools you like.
  • SilverBullet provides an enjoyable Markdown writing experience with a clean UI, rendering text using live preview, further reducing visual noise while still providing direct access to the underlying markdown syntax.
  • SilverBullet 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.
  • SilverBullet is optimized for keyboard-based operation:
    • Quickly navigate between pages using the page switcher (triggered with Cmd-k on Mac or Ctrl-k on Linux and Windows).
    • Run commands via their keyboard shortcuts or the command palette (triggered with Cmd-/ or Ctrl-/ on Linux and Windows).
    • Use Slash Commands to perform common text editing operations.
  • SilverBullet is a platform for End-User Programming through its support for Objects, Live Queries, Live Templates and Live Template Widgets, allowing to make parts of your pages and UI dynamic.
  • SilverBullet allows you to boost your writing/knowledge collection productivity using its various Templates mechanisms including powerful Snippets and Page Templates.
  • SilverBullet can be extended using Libraries and Plugs.
  • SilverBullet is free, open source, MIT licensed software.


To get a feel of what SilverBullet is capable of, have a look at this introduction video:

url: https://youtu.be/8btx9HeuZ4s

If you want to dig deeper, there’s another video on the template system.


Try it

Here’s the kicker:

You are looking at a (read-only) version of SilverBullet right now.

That’s right, this very website is powered by SilverBullet itself. 🤯

Except... you cannot edit anything. But don’t despair, head to play.silverbullet.md and login with user silverbullet, and password silverbullet to get the editable experience (in an environment that resets itself every 15 minutes).

Install SilverBullet

Convinced to install this yourself? Please proceed to Install, and enjoy!

What next?

  • Manual: how to use this thing.
  • CHANGELOG: we’re in active development, so things change rapidly. Watch this page to keep up.
  • Roadmap: currently planned features and priorities.
  • Community: join our community: ask questions, share your experiences.
  • Issues: if you have ideas or find bugs, please report them.
  • Mastodon: follow SilverBullet development on Mastodon.



Support

If you (hypothetically) find bugs or have feature requests, post them in our issue tracker. Want to contribute? Check out the code.

And... join our community!