Synote

A self-hosted personal note-taking app inspired by Obsidian, built with Rust. Notes are stored as plain markdown files — no database, no lock-in.

Live instance: research.erwarx.com

Features

Multi-Pane Workspace

• Open multiple notes side-by-side (up to 5 panes)
• Drag the handle between panes to resize
• Minimize panes to a vertical strip, restore with a click
• Per-pane back/forward navigation history
• Click a note in the sidebar to open it; if already open, scrolls to it

Editor

• Click a note to preview it; click Edit to open the split editor modal
• Live markdown preview (GitHub Flavored Markdown)
• Syntax highlighting for code blocks
• Drag-and-drop or paste images directly into the editor
• Resizable editor/preview split
• ⌘S to save

Linking & Organization

• Wikilinks — [[Note Title]] syntax; click to navigate within the same pane
• Hover previews — hover a wikilink to see a content excerpt
• Broken link creation — click a [[broken link]] to create the note instantly
• Backlinks panel — every pane shows incoming and outgoing links
• Tags — write #tagname anywhere; click a tag to filter notes
• Graph view — D3 force graph of all wikilink connections; click nodes to open notes
• Table of contents — auto-generated per pane for notes with 3+ headings

Sidebar

• Real-time title search with match highlighting
• Pinned notes — star any note (☆ in the pane topbar) to float it to the top
• Recently viewed section
• Sort by: last updated, title A→Z, created, or last viewed
• Resizable sidebar

View & Navigation

• Dark mode — ⌘D or click the moon icon
• Zen / focus mode — ⌘. hides the sidebar; hover a pane to reveal controls
• Command palette — ⌘K to jump to any note; shows recently viewed when empty
• Keyboard shortcuts cheatsheet — press ?
• Word count + reading time — shown in the footer of every pane
• Inline rename — double-click a pane title to rename the note

Export

• Export any pane as Markdown (.md download)
• Print / PDF via browser print dialog

Production Ready

• Docker deployment with health checks
• Automatic HTTPS via Let's Encrypt (Caddy)
• Security headers & CSP
• Token-based authentication
• Automated daily backups
• Persistent volume storage (Hetzner)

Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Rust 1.70+ — rustup.rs
• A modern web browser

Run locally

1. Start the backend:

cd backend
cargo run

The API starts on http://localhost:8080.

2. Serve the frontend:

cd frontend/public
python3 -m http.server 3001

3. Open http://localhost:3001

Production Deployment

Option 1: Docker (Recommended)

Development:

cd docker
docker-compose up --build

Production with HTTPS:

git clone https://github.com/erwinwahyura/synote.git
cd synote/docker

export DOMAIN=notes.yourdomain.com
export SYNOTE_AUTH_TOKEN=$(openssl rand -hex 32)
echo "Token: $SYNOTE_AUTH_TOKEN"

docker-compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d

HTTPS is configured automatically via Let's Encrypt. Visit https://notes.yourdomain.com.

Feature	Description
🔒 Automatic HTTPS	Let's Encrypt certificates (auto-renew)
🛡️ Security Headers	CSP, HSTS, X-Frame-Options
♻️ Auto-restart	Container restarts on crash
🏥 Health Checks	Automatic monitoring & recovery
💾 Daily Backups	Automated backups to persistent volume
🚀 Gzip Compression	Faster content delivery

Environment variables:

Variable	Description	Default
DOMAIN	Your domain for HTTPS	localhost
SYNOTE_AUTH_TOKEN	API authentication token	changeme
RUST_LOG	Logging level	info

Option 2: Hetzner (Current Setup)

Server: 46.224.127.221 (hetzner-cx23)
Data: /mnt/apps-data/synote/ (persistent volume)
Proxy: Caddy with automatic HTTPS

cd /home/deploy/synote
docker compose pull && docker compose up -d

Project Structure

synote/
├── backend/          # Rust/Axum API server
│   └── src/
│       ├── api/      # REST endpoints (notes, tags, links, graph)
│       ├── models/   # Data models
│       ├── storage/  # File system operations
│       ├── links/    # Wikilink parsing and index
│       ├── tags/     # Tag extraction and index
│       └── main.rs
├── frontend/
│   └── public/
│       └── index.html   # Entire frontend (single file, vanilla JS)
├── docker/
│   ├── docker-compose.yml
│   ├── docker-compose.prod.yml
│   └── Caddyfile
├── data/
│   └── notes/        # Markdown note files
└── config.toml

Configuration

[server]
host = "127.0.0.1"
port = 8080

[storage]
notes_dir = "./data/notes"

[auth]
enabled = true
token = "your-secure-token-here"  # or set SYNOTE_AUTH_TOKEN env var

API Endpoints

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	/api/notes	List all notes
POST	/api/notes	Create a note
GET	/api/notes/:id	Get a note
PUT	/api/notes/:id	Update a note
DELETE	/api/notes/:id	Delete a note
GET	/api/search?q=query	Search notes by title
GET	/api/tags	List all tags with counts
GET	/api/tags/:tag/notes	Notes with a specific tag
GET	/api/notes/:id/links	Wikilinks for a note
GET	/api/graph	Graph data (nodes + edges)

Authentication: include Authorization: Bearer <token> on all requests when auth is enabled.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
⌘K	Command palette
⌘S	Save note (in editor)
⌘D	Toggle dark mode
⌘.	Toggle zen mode
?	Show all shortcuts
Esc	Close overlay / exit zen mode
dbl-click title	Rename note inline

Backup & Restore

Notes are plain .md files — just copy the data directory.

# Manual backup from Hetzner
scp -r deploy@46.224.127.221:/mnt/apps-data/synote ./backup

# Restore
docker compose down
cp -r ./backup /mnt/apps-data/synote
docker compose up -d

Automated daily backups run to /mnt/apps-data/synote-backups/ in production.

Security

• Change SYNOTE_AUTH_TOKEN before deploying
• HTTPS is handled automatically in the Docker production setup
• Keep Rust dependencies updated (cargo update)

Tech Stack

• Backend: Axum (Rust)
• Frontend: Vanilla JS, single HTML file
• Markdown: marked.js
• Syntax highlighting: highlight.js
• Graph: D3.js
• Proxy: Caddy

License

See LICENSE for details.