Getting Started

Install, build, and run Krillnotes on your machine.

What is Krillnotes?

Krillnotes is a local-first, hierarchical note-taking application. Notes live in a tree, each note has a schema-defined type, and every change is recorded in an operation log — laying the groundwork for offline-first sync.

Built with Rust, Tauri v2, React, and SQLite.

Features

Hierarchical notes — Organize notes in an infinite tree. Each note can have children, with configurable sort order (alphabetical ascending/descending, or manual positioning).
Typed note schemas — Note types are defined as Rhai scripts. The built-in TextNote type ships out of the box; custom types support fields of type text, textarea, number, boolean, date, email, select, and rating.
User scripts — Each workspace stores its own Rhai scripts in the database. Create, edit, enable/disable, reorder, and delete scripts from a built-in script manager — no file system access required. Six example scripts ship in the user_scripts/ folder (Task, Book, Contact, Product, Recipe, Project).
On-save hooks — Rhai scripts can register on_save hooks that compute derived fields (e.g. auto-generating a note title from first name + last name, calculating a read duration, or setting a status badge).
Search — A live search bar with debounced fuzzy matching across note titles and all text fields. Keyboard-navigable results; selecting a match expands collapsed ancestors and scrolls the note into view.
Export / Import — Export an entire workspace as a .zip archive (notes + user scripts). Import a zip into a new workspace, with version-compatibility checks before importing.
Operations log viewer — Browse the full mutation history, filter by operation type or date range, and purge old entries to reclaim space.
Operation log — Every mutation (create, update, move, delete, script changes) is appended to an immutable log before being applied, enabling future undo/redo and device sync.
Tree keyboard navigation — Arrow keys to move between nodes, Right/Left to expand/collapse, Enter to edit the selected note.
Resizable panels — Drag the divider between the tree and the detail panel to resize.
Context menu — Right-click on any tree node for quick actions (Add Note, Edit, Delete).
Multi-window — Open multiple workspaces simultaneously, each in its own window.
Local-first — All data is stored in a single .krillnotes file on disk. No account, no cloud dependency, no internet connection required.
Cross-platform — Runs on macOS, Linux, and Windows via Tauri.

Requirements

Tool	Version
Rust	1.78+
Node.js	20+
Tauri CLI	v2

Install the Tauri prerequisites for your platform by following the Tauri v2 setup guide.

Build & Run

# Clone the repository
git clone <repo-url>
cd Krillnotes

# Install Node dependencies
cd krillnotes-desktop
npm install

# Run in development mode (hot-reload frontend + Rust backend)
npm run tauri dev

# Build a release binary
npm run tauri build

The compiled application is placed in krillnotes-desktop/src-tauri/target/release/bundle/.

Running Tests

# Core library unit tests
cargo test -p krillnotes-core

File Format

Each workspace is a single SQLite database with the .krillnotes extension. The file contains four tables:

Table	Purpose
`notes`	The note tree (id, title, type, parent, position, fields)
`operations`	Append-only mutation log (CRDT-style)
`workspace_meta`	Per-device metadata (device ID, selection state)
`user_scripts`	Per-workspace Rhai scripts (id, name, source code, load order, enabled flag)

The file is a standard SQLite 3 database and can be opened with any SQLite browser for inspection or backup.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.