Nook is a terminal markdown note editor written in Go with Bubble Tea. Notes are plain .md files in ~/.nook, organised in real folders, and are written with a Focus Line: the line you are typing always stays in the middle of the screen as raw markdown, while the rest of the document scrolls around it already rendered (headings, bold, links, quotes, lists and checkboxes without their markers).

Why Nook

• Write without distractions. The cursor doesn't move: the text does. Your eye always stays on the same spot.
• Real markdown, nicely seen. Only the focused line shows raw text; the others are rendered with coloured styles and a fixed, muted palette.
• A menu for your notes. A list centred on the selected entry, nested folders, a trash with restore, title filter, rename and on-the-fly creation.
• Keyboard and mouse. Every action has a shortcut; click, double click, triple click, drag and wheel/touchpad scrolling work as you would expect.
• Nothing hidden. Notes are ordinary markdown files and folders in ~/.nook: read them, back them up or sync them with any tool. Deletion is soft: a trashed note can be recovered until you delete it forever.

Installation

Requires Go 1.26 or later.

git clone <repository-url> nook
cd nook
go build -o nook .

With the Makefile: make build, make run, make test, make vet, make fmt.

Usage

./nook

On start-up the note list opens; from there you create, open, rename and trash notes. Everything lives in ~/.nook (override with NOOK_DIR): every note is a <title>.md file and every folder is a real directory, so you can edit them with any other editor too. Deleted notes are not erased but moved to the hidden ~/.nook/.trash folder, from where they can be restored. Only .md files and folders are shown, any other file in the folder is left alone.

Note list

Entries sit in a card at most 60 columns wide, centred horizontally and vertically on the selected entry. Each entry takes two lines: the name and, below it, a detail (date · N words for notes, N notes or empty for folders). Each entry is separated from the next by a ─ line. The title at the top is NOOK, with the folder path when you go down (NOOK › projects), or TRASH in the trash view.

Folders

Folders sit at the top of the list (name with a / suffix, own colour) and can be nested. Notes are created in the folder you are currently in. Trashing a folder sends its subfolders and all the notes it contains to the trash too; a note restored from a trashed folder returns to the root.

Key	Action
↑ / ↓	move the selection (stays centred)
enter / →	open the note, or enter the folder
← / esc	go up to the parent folder
c / ctrl+k	new folder
n / ctrl+n	new note (in the current folder)
r / ctrl+r	rename
d / ctrl+d	trash (soft delete)
o / ctrl+o	toggle list ↔ trash
u	restore (trash only)
x / ctrl+x	delete forever (trash only)
f / ctrl+f	filter by title
?	help
q / ctrl+q / ctrl+c	quit

In input popups (n, r, f) enter confirms and esc cancels. In confirmation popups (d, x) y or enter confirm, n or esc cancel.

Mouse: a click selects the entry, a double click opens the note or enters the folder.

Editor

The Focus Line always stays on the middle row: as you move, the text scrolls, not the cursor. The Focus Line shows raw markdown; every other line is rendered, with markers hidden (#, **, []()) and coloured styles for bold, italic, code, links, strikethrough, quotes, lists and checkboxes. Quotes (> text) are italic and flanked by a vertical bar ▌ running along the whole block, consecutive lines included — even the Focus Line, which shows the raw > but keeps the bar. Lines that are not in focus use a muted palette that is fixed and identical for all of them: the dimming does not depend on the distance from the Focus Line. Long lines are truncated with ….

Horizontal rules (---, ***, ___) are drawn as a full-width line, and fenced code blocks (``` or ~~~) as a shaded panel closed by a top edge that shows the language (┌─ go ────) and a bottom edge (└────); the code inside is shown as written, with no markdown applied.

Tables (a header row, a |---|:-:|--:| separator row and the rows below) are drawn with │ borders, a ├─┼─┤ rule under the header and every column padded to its widest cell, honouring the : alignment marks; inline styles work inside cells. The Focus Line of a table row still shows the raw text.

Key	Action
ctrl+s / F2	save (confirmation toast)
esc / ctrl+q	back to the list; with unsaved changes opens the Save / Discard / Cancel popup
ctrl+c	quit immediately
ctrl+shift+c / ctrl+shift+y	copy the selection (see below)
↑ ↓ ← →	move
home / end	start / end of line
ctrl+home / ctrl+end, ctrl+↑ / ctrl+↓	start / end of document
pgup / pgdn	page
ctrl+← / ctrl+→ (or alt+← / alt+→)	word backward / forward
shift+arrows, shift+home/end, shift+ctrl+←/→	selection
mouse drag	select from the pressed point to the cell reached
backspace / delete / enter	delete / delete forward / new line
alt+backspace	delete the previous word
ctrl+u / ctrl+k	delete to start / end of line
ctrl+shift+z / ctrl+y	undo / redo (see below)

In the Save / Discard / Cancel popup: ←/→ choose, enter confirms, esc returns to the editor.

The selection is visible: selected text is highlighted both on the (raw) Focus Line and on rendered lines, where the highlight is mapped onto the markdown segments. Typing or deleting replaces the selected text; formatting actions wrap it.

Scrolling with the mouse wheel or a two-finger touchpad gesture moves the document under the Focus Line, which stays where it is.

Copying and undo: ctrl+shift+c (or ctrl+shift+y, which terminals rarely use for themselves) copies the selected text to the system clipboard and ctrl+shift+z undoes the last change (a run of typing is a single step), while ctrl+y redoes it. ctrl+c and ctrl+z are not used for these: ctrl+c always quits.

A terminal only passes ctrl+shift+letter to the program in some cases: it has to report it (terminals with the kitty keyboard protocol such as kitty, WezTerm, Ghostty or iTerm2 do) and it must not use the combination itself. ctrl+shift+c is the "copy" shortcut of many terminals (kitty, WezTerm, Alacritty, GNOME Terminal, Windows Terminal), which keep it for themselves: unbind it in the terminal's settings. Run NOOK_DEBUG_KEYS=1 ./nook and check ~/.nook/keys.log to see what your terminal sends. Copying uses the OSC 52 terminal sequence and, as a fallback, pbcopy, clip, wl-copy, xclip or xsel.

Mouse: nothing moves while the button is held. A click makes the clicked line the Focus Line when you release the button (the column is mapped onto the raw text through the markdown segments); a double click selects the word, a triple click the line. Holding the left button and dragging only extends the selection from the point you pressed: the Focus Line stays where it was, also after the release, and moves to the end of the selection with the next key. With the mouse enabled, native terminal selection is done by holding Shift (or from the terminal's menu).

Formatting

ctrl+t opens the formatting palette. Press the letter shown next to an entry to apply that format at once, or use ↑/↓ and enter; esc (or ctrl+t again) closes it without applying anything.

b bold	i italic	s strikethrough	k code
u list	x checkbox	l link	q quote
h cycling heading (# → ## → ###)	0 removes the heading

With an active selection the action wraps the selected text; with no selection on the Focus Line you can also type markdown by hand, since the text there is raw.

Help

ctrl+/ or F1 opens the help popup on any screen; ? also works from the list (where you are not typing text). The popup is organised in tabs — List, Editor, Formatting, Mouse and General — and opens on the one that matches the current screen. Use ←/→ (or tab, or 1–5) to switch tab, ↑/↓ to scroll, and esc, q or F1 to close it.

Key diagnostics

With NOOK_DEBUG_KEYS=1 every tea.KeyMsg received is appended to ~/.nook/keys.log (one line per key, with Type, Runes, Alt, Paste and String), useful to see what your terminal actually sends. Messages the application doesn't recognise are logged as well — for example unknown escape sequences (CSI), which bubbletea delivers as generic messages — in the format:

Type=%T Val=%q

that is, the Go type of the message and its quoted value (one line per message). Messages that are already handled (WindowSizeMsg, KeyMsg, MouseMsg and the ticks that dismiss toasts) don't end up in this log: keys stay recorded in the logKey line. Without that variable (or with a value other than 1) nothing is written and the file is not created.

NOOK_DEBUG_KEYS=1 ./nook

How it was built

The basic structure of Nook has been created exclusively with the coding agent Orcrist, using only the DeepSeek Flash and DeepSeek Pro models.

License

Nook is released under the MIT License.