warning Warning
You are looking at the documentation of SilverBullet v2, which is still a work in progress. If you like less edgy stuff, you can have a look at v1 instead. All active development happens here, on v2, though. Migrating? Check out the Migrate from v1 docs.


Introduction

SilverBullet is an open source personal productivity platform built on Markdown, turbo charged with the scripting power of Lua. You self host it on your server, access it via any modern browser on any device (desktop, laptop, mobile). Since SilverBullet is built as a Local First PWA, it is fully offline capable. Temporarily don’t have network access? No problem, SilverBullet will sync your content when you get back online.

In case you were wondering: yes, you are looking at a (read-only) instance of SilverBullet right now. Switch off your Internet connection, and this website will still be available for your reading pleasure.

Let’s dig in.

A Typical Journey

You may start your SilverBullet journey by simply thinking of it as a note taking app.

Because, well, it is.

You write notes in Markdown and get Live Preview. It looks WYSIWYG while still easily accessing the markdown that lies underneath. There are convenient keyboard shortcuts to make your text bold or italic. You can create Links to other pages, via the [[other page]] syntax. As you navigate your Space (that’s what we call a SilverBullet instance) by clicking these links, you will see Linked Mentions to get a feel of how your pages are inter-linked.

That’s nice, but oh my. We’re just getting started.

Then you learn that in SilverBullet, you can embed Space Lua (SilverBullet’s Lua dialect) right into your pages, using the special ${lua expression} syntax.

You try something simple, like ${10 + 2} (Alt-click to see the underlying code). You realize you’ll never have to use a calculator again.

Ok, that’s cool, but you are serious people. You have work to do. You were promised a productivity platform, so let’s get to it.

As exercise material, here’s a page on SilverBullet’s author tagged as a #person, with some additional Frontmatter attached. As it turns out, pages (and other things) are indexed as Objects.

Let’s see if we can query those as a type of database (again, Alt-click the table to see the underlying code):

${query[[
  from index.tag "person"
  select { firstName=firstName, lastName=lastName }
]]}

Noice.

But let’s render this in a slightly more customized way:

${template.each(query[[from index.tag "person"]], template.new[==[
    * [[${ref}]]: **First name:** ${firstName}, **Last name:** ${lastName}, **Location:** ${location}
]==])}

So... your notes, become a type of... database?

Imagine the possibilities.

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

You were told wrong.

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, 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 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 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.


Install SilverBullet

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

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 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.