Introduction

SilverBullet is a tool to develop, organize, and structure your personal knowledge and to make it universally accessible across your devices.

In SilverBullet you keep your content as a collection of Markdown Pages (called a Spaces|Space). You navigate your space using the Page Picker like a traditional notes app, or through Links like a wiki (except they are Linked Mentions|bi-directional).

If you are the writer type, you’ll appreciate SilverBullet as a clean Markdown editor with Live Preview. If you have more of an outliner personality, SilverBullet has Outlines|Outlining tools for you. Productivity freak? Have a look at Tasks. More of a database person? You will appreciate Objects and Space Lua/Lua Integrated Query|Queries.

And if you are comfortable writing (or learning) some code, you will love dynamically generating content with Space Lua (SilverBullet’s Lua dialect), and use it to create custom Commands and Space Lua/Widgets.

Err, whut?! Dynamically generating content, what does that mean?

Let’s say you want to have a list of your 5 modified pages on your space’s index page. We can do that (Alt-click to see the underlying code):

${template.each(query from index.tag "page" order by _.lastModified desc limit 5, templates.pageItem)}

Want to collect all Tasks that you have not yet completed from across your space? No problem!

${template.each(query from index.tag "task" where not _.done limit 3, templates.taskItem)}

That all sounds nice, but what does that look like in practice? Well, if you’re wondering purely about looks: have a look around — this very website is hosted as a read-only SilverBullet instance.

If you’d like a bit of a tour and demo, give this a watch: ${embed.youtube "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mik1EbTshX4"}

Installing

SilverBullet is a self-hosted web application. You need to install it on a server. Perhaps you do this on a Raspberry Pi you didn’t have a use for, or a VPS somewhere in the cloud. SilverBullet is distributed as a single self-contained server Install/Binary or Install/Docker container. While this is a bit more complicated to set up than simply downloading a desktop or mobile app, since your space is centrally stored on a server under your control, you can now access it from anywhere you can access your server. And it may well be your gateway to Self Hosting more interesting applications.

The SilverBullet client is built as a Local First, PWA|progressive web application, syncing all your content into your browser’s local storage, enabling instant access to your entire space whether you are online or offline. Simply opt to “Install SilverBullet” from your browser (in any Chrome-based browser), add it to your Dock or home screen (Safari and Android), and voila: SilverBullet becomes indistinguishable from a regular desktop or mobile app. You can try it right here on silverbullet.md. pwa-screenshot.png

Unplug your (hypothetical) network cable, and everything still works!

Features

So, what is SilverBullet? Like... really.

  • SilverBullet at its core is a note taking application, a kind of personal wiki, storing its notes in the universal Markdown format in a folder on your server.
  • SilverBullet 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. It has convenient Commands and keyboard shortcuts, to e.g. make text bold or italic, and Slash Commands for more advanced text manipulation.
  • SilverBullet supports wiki-style page linking using the [page link](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 a web application and therefore accessible from wherever a (modern) web browser is available.
  • SilverBullet is built as a Local First PWA keeping a copy of your content in your browser’s local (IndexedDB) database, syncing back to the server when a network connection is available.
  • SilverBullet is a self-hosted solution: you own your data. Your Spaces|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 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 and Space Lua.
  • SilverBullet can be extended using Space Lua and Plugs, and a lot of core functionality is built that way.
  • SilverBullet is free, open source, MIT licensed software.

Project status

SilverBullet has been in development since late 2022, but is ever evolving. The current iteration is SilverBullet v2. We had a little bit of a reboot, rebuilding some of the foundations, and replacing some of the previous (v1) features.

What’s next?

  • Manual: SilverBullet’s official, yet incomplete manual.
  • CHANGELOG: we’re in active development, so things change rapidly. Watch this page to keep up.
  • 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.