deadwiki is a Markdown-powered wiki that uses your filesystem as
its db. This means you can keep your wiki in a git repository and edit
content with your text editor, or read and modify pages with style
using its 1990s-era web interface.
There are two built-in ways to access your deadwiki:
- Run the local webserver and use the (minimal) HTML UI.
- Just use your filesystem. Regular Markdown files.
cat
,ls
, etc.
Under construction!
The git master
may be broken, so make sure you install from
crates.io (see below).
I use it every day, and I like combining it with other small tools. I
keep a Markdown TODO list in ~/.todo
that I manage on the command
line with a todo
program, and I have a little scratch pad in
~/.scratch
that I add links to in a shell using an s
program,
like:
$ s https://git.coolstuff.com/some/repo
With deadwiki, I symlinked both of those files into my ~/.deadwiki
dir and can browse them using a fancy, 1990s-era HTML interface.
Okay, so how do you get started? You just need grep
, which you
probably already have, and cargo, which is usually pretty easy to
install.
Once you've got both of them you can install it with:
cargo install deadwiki
That'll give you a handy dandy dead
CLI tool, if everything is setup
and ~/.cargo/bin
is in your $PATH
. You should now be able to run
dead -h
to see the possibilities.
To begin, create an empty directory or find one already populated with
.md
files. This is your deadwiki. Simply point the CLI utility at it
to get going:
$ dead my-wiki-dir/
-> deadwiki serving my-wiki-dir/ at http://0.0.0.0:8000
Now visit http://0.0.0.0:8000/ in your browser!
By default the main page will list all your wiki pages, but if
index.md
exists in your wiki it'll show that wiki page instead.
You can edit wiki pages locally with something like vim
, or by using
the web UI. Edits show up on the next page load, as do new pages -
there is no database and no fancy pantsy caching. Just you, your
filesystem, and a dream.
In addition to CommonMark, Markdown files can link to each other by
putting the [Page Name]
in brackets. Like most wikis, it'll either
be a link to the actual page or a link to create it.
deadwiki also includes support for #hashtags
. Any hashtag appearing
in wiki text will be linked to a search page that lists all wiki pages
containing that hashtag.
Finally, if you want to sync your wiki automatically, there is some
very basic git support. Basically, if you start the dead
program with the -s
or --sync
flag and point it at an existing git
repository, it'll do this every 30 seconds or so:
git add .
git commit -am update
git pull origin master
git push origin master
Like I said, super basic! But it works, and it's nice that it syncs changes you make even outside of the web UI.
There are two modes: browsing and editing. Editing is powered by SimpleMDE and includes all its default shortcuts (shown below), plus a few deadwiki-specific shortcuts.
Browsing mode includes a few keyboard shortcuts to make navigation quicker and more nimble.
Shortcut | Notes |
---|---|
Double Click |
Enter edit or create mode |
Ctrl-h |
Go to the home page |
Ctrl-j |
Jump to page (fuzzy finder) |
Ctrl-n |
Go to the "new" page |
Ctrl-e |
Open editor for current page |
i |
Insert mode: Edit or New |
Shortcut | Notes |
---|---|
ESC |
Exits edit mode |
Ctrl Enter |
Submits your edits |
Cmd Enter |
Same |
Cmd-' |
Toggle Blockquote |
Cmd-B |
Toggle Bold |
Cmd-E |
Clean Block |
Cmd-H |
Toggle Heading (Smaller) |
Cmd-I |
Toggle Italic |
Cmd-K |
Draw Link |
Cmd-L |
Toggle Unordered List |
Cmd-P |
Toggle Preview |
Cmd-Alt-C |
Toggle Code Block |
Cmd-Alt-I |
Draw Image |
Cmd-Alt-L |
Toggle Ordered LIST |
Shift-Cmd-H |
Toggle Heading (Bigger) |
F9 |
Toggle Side-By-Side |
F11 |
Toggle Fullscreen |
The code is in pretty rough shape right now, as this is mostly a prototype-in-progress. But you can hack on it pretty easily with cargo:
$ git clone https://github.com/xvxx/deadwiki
$ cd deadwiki
$ cargo run wiki/
There's a basic wiki included that shows off some features.
--read-only
mode, so i can have a copy i can view anywhere- mobile-friendly CSS
- search (probably just
grep
) --gopher
: serve wiki pages over gopher too (probably using phd)*.css
in wiki dir gets included- homebrew package, AUR package
brew services
for running on osx,systemd
for arch- basic TUI for creating new pages or opening wiki pages in
$EDITOR
.
- no database
- text editor/plain text friendly
- prefer server-side rendering
- take your data with you (scm friendly)
- lean on standard UNIX commands (find, grep)
- js only for user input (keyboard shortcuts, markdown editor, finder)
- no js frameworks/helpers
- build time matters (28 crates currently, ~6s release ~4s debug)
![]() |
![]() |
---|---|
Rendering Markdown. Wow. |
Editing Markdown. Amazing. |
Please direct all known and unknown (suspected) bugs to this URL:
All SVG icons are Feather icons: https://feathericons.com/
deadwiki's source is licensed under the MIT License.