clin

A TUI reimagination of Obsidian — feature-packed note management in your terminal.

clin was originally an app I made when I got into C. It was really rough and basic, so I decided to remake it in Rust with more features and an improved user experience to better fit your workflow!

clin is a FOSS, minimal(around 2-5~ megabytes of binary) and TUI alternative for the note management app Obsidian. It mainly provides the biggest features of Obsidian(markdown editing and rendering, .canvas files, graph view etc.) in a extremely compact package and really minimal resource usage, written in Rust at a TUI environment. It's goal to provide you a feature-packed note management app right at your terminal while keeping the UI/UX easy and accessible. It's 90% compatible with Obsidian you can literally copy-paste your Obsidian vault to the clin vault and it just works without a problem, unsupported stuff are image rendering, databases, Obsidian plugins and some small features here and there.

• Notes view — folder tree, tags, markdown preview pane (via glow), search, filter, sort, pin, multi-select, trash management, file management (copy, paste, delete, rename, move).
• Editor view — built-in text editor with mouse support, line numbers, undo/redo, and external editor integration (VISUAL/EDITOR env or config). Markdown preview pane alongside editor.
• Graph view — fully integrated force-directed graph visualization of your note corpus. Edges from [[wikilinks]]. Physics simulation, minimap, legend, search, configurable colors and layout. See GRAPH_VIEW.md.
• Canvas view — Obsidian-compatible .canvas file format. Place text/file/link/group nodes on an infinite 2D canvas, connect them with edges. Right-click context menu, drag, resize, zoom. See CANVAS.md.
• Draw view — freehand drawing canvas with shapes (rect, ellipse, diamond, line, arrow), text, and eraser tool. .draw file format. See DRAW.md.
• Content tree view — view to see the content of a .md file as a tree with headers being the parents and content being the children.
• Git backup — backup system using git as backend, initialize a repository and backup your notes automatically.
• Command palette (Ctrl+P) — extensible action system with encrypt/decrypt, theme switcher, OCR paste, canvas/draw creation, graph view. See COMMAND_PALETTE.md.
• Theme system — 11 built-in themes (TokyoNight, CatppuccinMocha, OneDark, Gruvbox, Dracula, Nord, RosePine, Everforest, Kanagawa, Solarized), transparent/solid backgrounds, per-color overrides. See THEME_SYSTEM.md.
• Encryption — on-demand ChaCha20-Poly1305 AEAD per-note encryption. .clin files with plaintext frontmatter for fast summary loading. See ENCRYPTION.md.
• Obsidian .canvas import — existing Obsidian canvas files are read and rendered, except for images.
• Templates — TOML-based note templates with variable substitution ({date}, {time}, {weekday}, etc.). See TEMPLATES.md.

These are highly recommended for the best experience:

• A nerd font — required for rendering glyphs which are highly used around the UI.
• A modern terminal — such as kitty, ghostty etc.

These tools are optional — clin works without them:

git clone https://github.com/reekta92/clin-rs.git
cd clin-rs
cargo build --release

cargo install clin-rs

Download the latest .deb from the Releases page.

sudo dpkg -i clin-rs_*_amd64.deb

Download the latest .rpm from the Releases page.

sudo rpm -i clin-rs-*.x86_64.rpm

A PKGBUILD is included in the root of the repository.

git clone https://github.com/reekta92/clin-rs.git
cd clin-rs
makepkg -si

yay -S clin-rs-bin

Note: Requires nix-command and flakes experimental features enabled.

Run directly:

nix run github:reekta92/clin-rs --extra-experimental-features "nix-command flakes"

Install to profile:

nix profile install github:reekta92/clin-rs

Add to your flake inputs:

{
  inputs.clin.url = "github:reekta92/clin-rs";
}

Then include inputs.clin.packages.${system}.default in your environment.systemPackages or home.packages.

Download the latest .AppImage from the Releases page.

chmod +x clin-*-x86_64.AppImage
./clin-*-x86_64.AppImage

Download the latest .tar.gz from the Releases page.

tar -xzf clin-rs-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz
chmod +x clin
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
mv clin ~/.local/bin/

Rust not installed? Run curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh to install Rust.

# Launch the interactive TUI
clin

# Create a quick note
clin notes quick "Meeting notes from today" "standup-2026-06-13"

# Create a note from a template
clin notes new --template diary

# Open a specific note
clin notes open "my-note"

Once inside the TUI: navigate with j/k, open notes with Enter, open the command palette with Ctrl+P, and view the graph with Ctrl+G. Press ? for the full keybind reference.

~/.config/clin/config.toml -> main configuration file (includes theme, graf settings, etc.) ~/.config/clin/keybinds.toml -> keybind configuration file

See the full configuration reference for all available options.

# General settings
storage_path = "/path/to/your/vault"
mouse_enabled = true
confirm_on_delete = true
confirm_on_quit = false

[list]
preview_enabled = true
preview_position = "right"
preview_encryption = false
show_date_in_list = true
show_file_size = false
date_format = "%Y-%m-%d"
density = "comfortable"
default_view = "grid"
default_sort_field = "title"
default_sort_order = "ascending"
pinned_on_top = true

[editor]
external_command = "nvim"
external_enabled = false
preview_enabled = false
show_line_numbers = true

[theme]
theme = "tokyo_night"
background = "transparent"
# accent = "#ff6600"

See THEME_SYSTEM.md for theme options and CONFIG_REFERENCE.md for all options and sections.

See the full keybinds reference for all available actions and defaults.

[list]
move_up = ["Up", "k"]
move_down = ["Down", "j"]
open = ["Enter"]
delete = ["d", "Delete"]
quit = ["q"]
help = ["?", "F1"]
open_command_palette = ["Ctrl+p", "Shift+Enter"]
# ... see CONFIG_REFERENCE.md for full list

[edit]
back = ["Esc"]
cycle_focus = ["Tab"]
copy = ["Ctrl+c", "Ctrl+Insert"]
# ... see CONFIG_REFERENCE.md

[graph]
quit = ["Esc"]
pan_up = ["Up", "k"]
# ... see CONFIG_REFERENCE.md

clin                              Launch interactive TUI (default)
clin notes list                   List note titles
clin notes new [-t,--template N] [TITLE]   Create a note and open it
clin notes open <TITLE>           Open a note by title
clin notes quick <CONTENT> [TITLE] Quick note, then exit
clin notes search <QUERY>         Search notes by title and content

clin storage show                 Show storage path
clin storage set <PATH>           Set a custom (absolute) storage path
clin storage reset                Reset to default storage path
clin storage migrate              Migrate data from a previous location

clin keybinds show                Show keybindings
clin keybinds export              Export keybinds as TOML
clin keybinds reset               Reset keybinds to defaults

clin templates list               List templates
clin templates init               Create example templates

clin config show                  Print effective config (TOML)
clin config path                  Print config file path
clin config edit                  Open config in $EDITOR
clin config reset                 Reset config to default values

clin completion <SHELL>           Generate shell completions
clin --version                    Print version
clin --config <PATH>              Override config file (global)
clin --help                       Show help

Full technical documentation lives in docs/:

• Architecture — system overview, event loop, threading model
• Configuration Reference — all config.toml and keybinds.toml options
• Graph View — force-directed graph visualization
• Canvas — Obsidian-compatible canvas view
• Draw — freehand drawing canvas
• Content Tree — nested outline navigation
• Encryption — ChaCha20-Poly1305 per-note encryption
• Theme System — built-in themes and customization
• Command Palette — extensible action system
• Templates — TOML-based note templates

See ROADMAP.md for planned features and progress.

Contributions are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

Licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.

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