Capture the flow. Map the connections. Let your thoughts settle.
Silt is a simple, ultra-fast, local-first note-taking app designed to capture stream-of-consciousness thoughts and connect them. Like silt carried by water, your daily notes are fleeting deposits that slowly settle, accumulate, and connect—ultimately building a fertile, structured foundation of knowledge.
It bridges the gap between structured namespace notebooks and chronological daily streams. Silt treats human-readable plaintext Markdown files on your local drive as the absolute database of record, while utilizing a native desktop runtime cache to project your logs into a unified Tasks hub with List, Board, and Calendar display modes.
Silt is built on the belief that your notes belong to you.
- Local Flat-Files as Source of Truth: Your data lives in plain Markdown (
.md) files on your computer. If Silt disappears tomorrow, your notes remain fully readable in any text editor. - Speed and Efficiency: No bloated Electron wrapper. Silt uses system-native WebKit engines via Wails, keeping idle memory allocation below 65MB RAM and input latency within a 16ms frame budget (60 FPS).
- Atomic Reliability: An atomic staging and overwrite protocol prevents file corruption on power loss or crash.
- Privacy-First: Silt is completely local. It does not transfer any information to other networked systems, and contains no telemetry or automatic update checks.
- Notebook › Section › Page Structure – Directly mapped to directories on your local drive. Silt starts completely blank; you create, open, or link notebooks.
- Smart Graph – Hierarchical smart tag namespaces (
#work/project/milestone), global block references (((uuid))) with hover previews, and live dual-bound embeds ({{embed:uuid}}). - Inline Task Machine – Turn any list bullet into a state-managed task. Silt parses standard GFM checkboxes (
- [ ],- [/],- [x]) and extracts Dataview-style inline metadata:Recurring tasks – Add- [/] Critical workstream [priority:: 1] [due:: 2026-08-03] [owner:: Bob] #work/sprint-4
[recur:: every week]to any task and Silt automatically generates the next instance when you complete it. Supported intervals:every day,every weekday(Mon–Fri),every week,every N weeks,every month,every N months,every year. The next due date is computed from the current due date, skipping any missed occurrences (no clutter from backfilled instances). - Built-in & Custom Themes – Styled with a "Cyber-Ink" design language. Ships with 11 premium themes including dark, light, playful, retro, and dual-surface (dark chrome + light page) palettes. Import or export your own as simple JSON files.
- Flexible Plugin SDK – Dynamic viewports like the unified Tasks hub are decoupled as plugins. Extend Silt using native ES Modules in a secure runtime sandbox; plugins may carry their own per-plugin data store (including vector search) without touching the core Markdown index.
- Linked Notebooks – Mount external folders (e.g., a synced OneDrive/SharePoint or Obsidian directory) directly without importing them. They are watched and edited in place.
Each concern in Silt has a single source of truth. Refer to these documents for detailed architectural and design specifications:
| Document | Scope |
|---|---|
| SPECS.md | Product specification: AST grammar, file formats, plugin SDK architecture, configurations. |
| ARCHITECTURE.md | Engineering blueprint: process topology, SQLite schema, IPC API contracts, file synchronization. |
| DESIGN.md | Design system: Cyber-Ink aesthetics, color tokens, typography, component specs. |
| docs/PLUGIN_DEVELOPMENT.md | How to build, package (.silt-plugin), and distribute plugins. |
| docs/THEMING.md | Guide to authoring, importing, and selecting themes. |
| docs/BACKUP.md | How to back up, restore, and migrate vaults using .silt-vault archives. |
| docs/BRING_YOUR_OWN_MODEL.md | Configure local (Ollama) or cloud (OpenAI-compatible) AI providers for plugin features. |
| TESTING.md | Test coverage matrix, benchmarks, and verification checklists. |
| CODE_SIGNING.md | Windows Authenticode signing policy, verification, and SignPath setup. |
- Download the latest installer (
silt-v<version>-windows-installer.exe) or the portable ZIP (silt-v<version>-windows-portable.zip) from GitHub Releases. - Run the installer or extract the portable ZIP.
Note
Windows Defender SmartScreen Bypass: Since Silt releases are unsigned, Windows SmartScreen may show an "Unknown publisher" warning. To bypass this:
- Right-click the downloaded
.exe(or the.zipfile before extracting it). - Select Properties.
- Under the General tab, check the Unblock checkbox in the Security section at the bottom.
- Click Apply or OK, then run/extract the file.
Note
Minimum distro: Silt links against WebKitGTK 6.0 (the Wails v3 default Linux stack), which ships in Ubuntu 24.04+ / Debian 13 / Fedora 39+. Older releases (e.g. Ubuntu 22.04) lack libwebkitgtk-6.0 and can't run the AppImage or resolve the .deb's dependencies.
- Download the latest AppImage (
Silt-*.AppImage) or Debian package (silt_*_debian_amd64.deb) from GitHub Releases. - Choose one of the following installation paths:
- AppImage (Universal):
Make the file executable and run it:
chmod +x Silt-*.AppImage ./Silt-*.AppImage
- Debian / Ubuntu Package:
Install via
apt(which resolves required webview dependencies like WebKitGTK):sudo apt install ./silt_*_debian_amd64.deb
- AppImage (Universal):
Make the file executable and run it:
Ensure you have Go (v1.26+), Node.js (v22+), and the Wails CLI globally configured.
git clone https://github.com/Chelydra-Labs/Silt.git
cd Silt
wails3 devwails3 buildFor the full release pipeline (including icon generation, NSIS installers, and portable ZIP packages), refer to the release script (build.sh) or (build-linux.sh).
Silt is open-source software licensed under the MIT License.