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
This is very cool, and I’ve been watching the project for a month or so.
I like the query setup and the templates look very interesting. One of my biggest complaints about Logseq is how much of a pain simple query operations can be.
A few things make me hesitate a bit:
I’ve been burned on single-dev passion projects in the past.
As a self hosted web app, it’s a bit more difficult to manage on a company owned machine. I know Electron apps get hate, but that would ease some pain here.
The rapid pace of development is both exciting and worrisome. For example, a recent update completely changed the underlying templating engine from a well-known open source solution to a custom solution. I worry if I rely on this, something might catch me by surprise.
Regarding the first, the best I can offer is what many other project in this space say: “it’s just markdown files on disk, you can take them anywhere at any time”. Obviously this is only partially true, because the more SB-specific features you use, the more you get locked in. Your notes will never go away (if you back them up). But all time building queries and templates, would have been wasted.
Regarding company owned machines: a concern I heard for Logseq and Obsidian is that people cannot use them at work/with a work machine because they’re not allowed to install anything. For SilverBullet I’d recommend not installing it on your laptop (work or otherwise), but rather on some other machine. Perhaps you have a Raspberry Pi lying around unused. Or maybe you buy a cheap VPS (silverbullet.md itself runs on a $5/month Hetzner VM). Then you can access it from anywhere with a web browser, and I assume your work laptop has one of those.
Regarding the high pace of development: also fair. The reason I have not been very actively promoting SB so far is because of the high change churn rate. If you’re a power user, you kind of need to keep on top of stuff. Mostly I attempt to give people migration tools, but this is always a opportunity cost decision. Until recently some fundamentals still didn’t feel quite right (like the templates). I think we’re getting there now though. Another one I still need to figure out is how to do the distribution of templates, slash commands. This idea of a Library you import works, but you cannot easily keep it up to date. This so something to still figure out. Generally I’ll do my best to mark the parts of this that are experimental or prone to still change.
Thanks for your answers! Very fair thoughts, particularly about the flexibility of keeping things as just files on disk.
Regarding the work thing, I should clarify my use case: I’d like to take work related notes that could contain privileged company data. With a standalone app, I can install it and manage the files on my device (with cloud syncing in an approved corporate way). I could still probably do that here, but it requires the work of running the web server locally. Unfortunately, an external source like a VPS wouldn’t be allowed.
I have one more question, if you have some time: One of the things I like most about Logseq is that when there is a list of back links on a page, the context capture is excellent (likely due to it being an outliner). I’ve noticed that with SilverBullet, the context capture might begin/end in the middle of a word, etc. Is there a way to configure that or plans to enhance it?
Makes sense. Regarding the linked mention snippets. Please create a GitHub issue (https://github.com/silverbulletmd/silverbullet) for that. Right now it does the simplest thing, which is just to take x characters on each side. That can definitely be improved.
This is very cool, and I’ve been watching the project for a month or so.
I like the query setup and the templates look very interesting. One of my biggest complaints about Logseq is how much of a pain simple query operations can be.
A few things make me hesitate a bit:
What are your thoughts on those concerns, OP?
All your concerns are completely fair.
Regarding the first, the best I can offer is what many other project in this space say: “it’s just markdown files on disk, you can take them anywhere at any time”. Obviously this is only partially true, because the more SB-specific features you use, the more you get locked in. Your notes will never go away (if you back them up). But all time building queries and templates, would have been wasted.
Regarding company owned machines: a concern I heard for Logseq and Obsidian is that people cannot use them at work/with a work machine because they’re not allowed to install anything. For SilverBullet I’d recommend not installing it on your laptop (work or otherwise), but rather on some other machine. Perhaps you have a Raspberry Pi lying around unused. Or maybe you buy a cheap VPS (silverbullet.md itself runs on a $5/month Hetzner VM). Then you can access it from anywhere with a web browser, and I assume your work laptop has one of those.
Regarding the high pace of development: also fair. The reason I have not been very actively promoting SB so far is because of the high change churn rate. If you’re a power user, you kind of need to keep on top of stuff. Mostly I attempt to give people migration tools, but this is always a opportunity cost decision. Until recently some fundamentals still didn’t feel quite right (like the templates). I think we’re getting there now though. Another one I still need to figure out is how to do the distribution of templates, slash commands. This idea of a Library you import works, but you cannot easily keep it up to date. This so something to still figure out. Generally I’ll do my best to mark the parts of this that are experimental or prone to still change.
I hope that helps.
Thanks for your answers! Very fair thoughts, particularly about the flexibility of keeping things as just files on disk.
Regarding the work thing, I should clarify my use case: I’d like to take work related notes that could contain privileged company data. With a standalone app, I can install it and manage the files on my device (with cloud syncing in an approved corporate way). I could still probably do that here, but it requires the work of running the web server locally. Unfortunately, an external source like a VPS wouldn’t be allowed.
I have one more question, if you have some time: One of the things I like most about Logseq is that when there is a list of back links on a page, the context capture is excellent (likely due to it being an outliner). I’ve noticed that with SilverBullet, the context capture might begin/end in the middle of a word, etc. Is there a way to configure that or plans to enhance it?
Makes sense. Regarding the linked mention snippets. Please create a GitHub issue (https://github.com/silverbulletmd/silverbullet) for that. Right now it does the simplest thing, which is just to take x characters on each side. That can definitely be improved.