Basalt is a set of utilities for knowledge management.

Design

Basalt is split into two parts: a CLI written in Rust and a Typst library.

When possible, functionality should be implemented in the Typst library and be usable in a standalone mode without using CLI. The CLI should be a convenience, and only include functionality that isn't possible to achieve with pure Typst.

Functionality

• Create new notes
  • Manually
  • With default setup (formatters)
  • From templates (formatters)
• Forward links
  • Traversable (xlink)
  • Canonical target for linking to other notes (meta)
  • Autocomplete
• Back links
  • Get list for link
  • Traversable
  • Template to display note backlinks
• Search
  • Possible (use any fuzzy finder)
  • Canonical method
• Live preview
  • Real time
  • Forward search (like synctex)
  • Backward search (like synctex)
  • Focus on active note (single-note mode)
• Full vault export
  • As pdf
  • As HTML (waiting on upstream)
• Single-note mode
  • Live preview (individual pdfs)
  • Links (xlink, as-branch)
• Query API
  • Links to document
  • Links in document
  • Character count
  • Word count
  • User defined metadata
• Graph view

Priorities

Features are prioritized by how useful I find them, how feasible they are to implement, and how necessary Basalt is for them to exist. Here's a rough ordering:

• Back links
  • Get list for link
  • Traversable
  • Template to display note backlinks
• Graph view
• Query API
  • Links to document
  • Links in document
  • Character count
  • Word count
  • User defined metadata
• Forward links
  • Autocomplete
• Search
  • Canonical method
• Live preview
  • Forward search (like synctex)
  • Backward search (like synctex)
• Full vault export
  • As HTML (waiting on upstream)