📓 Snipsel

Your personal, self-hosted, AI-powered notes & tasks app — mobile-first, beautifully simple.

Snipsel is an open-source PWA for capturing ideas, notes, tasks, bookmarks, and media — all in one place. Enhanced with a user-configurable AI assistant, it helps you manage your knowledge without cloud lock-in. Runs on your own server in minutes.

     

     

     

   

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✨ Why Snipsel?

Most note apps are either too simple (just plain text) or too heavy (Notion, Obsidian). Snipsel hits the sweet spot: structured collections, multiple content types, sharing, reminders — yet still feels as lightweight and instant as a sticky note.

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🚀 Features

📋 Collections & Snipsels

Organize everything in collections — from grocery lists to project notes. Each item inside is a snipsel, which can be one of six types:

• 📝 Text — plain notes with Markdown support
• ✅ Task — checkable to-dos with done tracking
• 🔗 External link — save URLs with labels
• 📎 Internal link — reference another snipsel
• 🖼️ Image — attach and view photos
• 📁 File attachment — store any file

Smart Selection Features:

• Multi-Select — Click the selection bar on the right to select multiple snipsels
• Range Selection — Hold Shift (desktop) or long-press (mobile) to select all snipsels between two items
• Auto-Select Children — Selecting a parent snipsel with collapsed children automatically selects all nested items
• Keyboard Shortcuts — Extensive keyboard shortcuts for navigation, editing, and bulk operations (see User Documentation)

🤖 AI Assistant (Vision-ready)

Process your notes with a built-in AI assistant. Configure your own OpenAI-compatible endpoint (OpenAI, Groq, Ollama) and use it to summarize, translate, or transform snipsels with custom prompts. Supports vision models for image analysis and text extraction from attachments.

📅 Daily Journal

A built-in daily collection auto-created for each day. Open tasks from the past 30 days are automatically carried over so nothing falls through the cracks.

🔒 Security-first

• Passkeys (WebAuthn / FIDO2) — log in with Face ID, Touch ID, or a hardware key
• TOTP 2FA — standard authenticator app support
• Passcode lock — protect individual collections with a PIN
• Password reset via email
• Registration toggle — disable new user registration via environment variable

🎨 Beautiful & Adaptive UI

• Light, dark, or system-adaptive theme
• Custom accent color per collection
• Cover images for collections
• Installable as a PWA on any device

🗺️ Geo Location

Capture and view snipsels with geographic coordinates. See your notes on an interactive map in the Tags/Mentions view, filter by location, and track where your ideas were born. Perfect for travel journals, field notes, or location-based task management.

📥 Import from Twos

Coming from Twos? Snipsel can import all your lists, tasks, photos, and reminders with a single click — including recurrence rules.

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🐳 Quick Start (Docker)

docker run -d \
  --name snipsel \
  -p 5000:5000 \
  -v ./data:/app/data \
  -v ./uploads:/app/uploads \
  -e SNIPSEL_SECRET_KEY="your-secure-secret-key" \
  -e SNIPSEL_DOMAIN="yourdomain.com" \
  -e SNIPSEL_FRONTEND_URL="https://yourdomain.com" \
  -e SNIPSEL_REGISTRATION_ENABLED=1 \
  ghcr.io/mcfetz/snipsel:latest

That's it. Snipsel runs as a single container — no separate database server, no Redis, no complex setup.

Or with Docker Compose:

# Build the image
docker build -t snipsel .

# Run with compose
docker compose up -d

Note: SNIPSEL_DOMAIN and SNIPSEL_FRONTEND_URL are required for Passkey authentication to work correctly.

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🔧 Development

Backend (Flask + SQLite)

Dependencies

• FFmpeg: Required for generating video thumbnails. Install it via your package manager (e.g., brew install ffmpeg on macOS or sudo apt install ffmpeg on Linux).

cd backend
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
pip install -e .

export SNIPSEL_SECRET_KEY="dev"
flask --app snipsel_api.app run --debug --port 5000

# Run database migrations
flask --app snipsel_api.app db upgrade

Frontend (Svelte + Vite)

cd frontend
npm install
npm run dev

The frontend proxies /api/* to the backend in dev mode.

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⚙️ Configuration

Variable	Default	Description
SNIPSEL_SECRET_KEY	dev	Session secret — change in production!
SNIPSEL_DATABASE_URL	sqlite:///snipsel.db	Database URL
SNIPSEL_UPLOAD_DIR	./uploads	Directory for uploaded files
SNIPSEL_MAX_UPLOAD_BYTES	10485760	Max upload size (10 MB)
SNIPSEL_DOMAIN	localhost	Domain for Passkey auth
SNIPSEL_FRONTEND_URL	http://localhost:5173	Frontend URL for CORS & Passkeys
SNIPSEL_REGISTRATION_ENABLED	1	Set to 0 to disable new user registration

Optional SMTP (password reset):

Variable	Description
SNIPSEL_SMTP_HOST	SMTP server host
SNIPSEL_SMTP_PORT	SMTP port (default: 587)
SNIPSEL_SMTP_USERNAME	SMTP username
SNIPSEL_SMTP_PASSWORD	SMTP password
SNIPSEL_SMTP_USE_TLS	Enable TLS (default: 1)
SNIPSEL_MAIL_FROM	Sender address
SNIPSEL_PUBLIC_BASE_URL	If set, emails include a reset link

Optional VAPID (push notifications):

Variable	Description
VAPID_PUBLIC_KEY	VAPID public key
VAPID_PRIVATE_KEY	VAPID private key
VAPID_SUBJECT	e.g. mailto:admin@yourdomain.com

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🛠️ Tech Stack

• Backend: Python · Flask · SQLAlchemy · SQLite · Flask-Migrate
• Frontend: Svelte 5 · TypeScript · Vite · PWA (Service Worker)
• Auth: Session cookies · WebAuthn (Passkeys) · TOTP · bcrypt
• Deployment: Docker (multi-stage build) · single container (includes FFmpeg)

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📄 License

MIT