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Last Updated: 07-08-2026 06:33 PM (UTC)

Silicon Notes

"Somewhat lightweight, low-friction" is how Silicon Notes' author describes the personal knowledge base - written after DokuWiki's editor "drove me mad" and no existing wiki quite fit. The philosophy is that small frequent annoyances compound into cognitive load with no return, so everything here is optimized for frictionless daily use. Notes are written in plaintext Markdown and rendered as clean HTML with Pygments syntax highlighting for code blocks; pages get bi-directional relationships (backlinks), so the knowledge base becomes a connected web rather than a folder tree; and full-text plus title search retrieves anything fast. A table of contents lives in the left sidebar - "where it belongs" - editable while you read without scrolling away. Page history tracks revisions for auditing and rollback, JSON export/import keeps everything portable, and the mobile layout is genuinely usable. The stack is deliberately minimal: Python and Flask with Mistune for Markdown and SQLite for storage - no big frameworks, just a few small dependencies. One honest caveat: there is no built-in authentication, so deploy it behind a VPN, private network, or reverse-proxy auth layer. For a solo engineer's brain, it is exactly enough.

Silicon Notes

Benefits

  • Friction Engineered Out
  • Every interaction tuned for daily use - edit the TOC without leaving the page.
  • Notes Become a Web
  • Bi-directional links connect pages the way ideas actually relate.
  • Nothing Locked In
  • Plaintext Markdown with JSON export/import - your notes stay portable.
  • Trivially Light
  • Flask and SQLite with a few small dependencies - negligible resources.

Features

  • Markdown Editing
  • Plaintext in, clean HTML out, with syntax-highlighted code blocks.
  • Backlinks
  • Bi-directional page relationships surface connections automatically.
  • Full-Text Search
  • Powerful search across page bodies and titles.
  • Page History
  • Revision tracking for auditing and rollback.
  • Sidebar TOC
  • An always-visible, editable table of contents in the left sidebar.
  • Mobile Layout
  • A genuinely usable responsive interface on phones.