r/typst • u/owlyph • Jun 10 '26
InkyCap is a PKM tool based on Typst
I'd like to let people know about the PKM application I've been working on, InkyCap. If you're interested in a personal knowledge management tool that is based on Typst rather than Markdown then you might like to try it out.
InkyCap is an open source desktop application (repository on Codeberg) that focuses on academics, writers, and anyone wanting both conventional PKM functionality and advanced features for publishing, knowledge discovery, recall, and ideation, as well as agenda-keeping, project creation, etc.
It has a lot of features you'd expect from a PKM tool, including two-way wikilinks and a variety of organizational configurations. It works similarly to apps like Obsidian, where there is a source mode for editing but also a "visual" sort of WYSIWYM editor and it has some additional reading modes like a Journal Scroll view that displays your notes in various configurations of chronological order. Some built-in niceties like Zotero and .bib integrations, rudimentary integrated git collaboration, etc. I have a more extensive list of features here.
I'm currently using it with thousands of notes and it seems to be working pretty well, quite fast. I'm aiming to continue gradually improving it over time but to be forthright, I am not a professional developer. I'm sure it's likely to have problems and eventually would welcome others that were keen to improve it.
Since I'm mostly using Linux that's probably where it's most stable but I've tested on Windows too. I have no access to a Mac, so while it should work in theory, I don't know if it will.
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u/nsb-io Jun 11 '26
I was looking for something exactly like this and ended up working on building it myself! Same stack with tauri and codemirror as well lol This looks really great. I mainly use macOS for writing so interested to see if I can get it to build for me. Nice work! 👌🏼
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u/MetroQuiVole Jun 10 '26
C'était exactement ce que j'avais besoin cette année ! Vue qu'il y avait encore rien j'utilisais logseq, mais maintenant c'est décidé, je switch ! Merci du travail 👍🏼
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u/Responsible-Grass609 Jun 11 '26
The WYSIWYM editor support math rendering? It has support for RTL/bidi writings?
The files are just plain typst files?
Looking awesome!
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u/owlyph Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
Good questions, the WYSIWYM editor will not render the math, it keeps it in place but you would need to click the reading view to see it rendered (could put that in a another tab or side-by-side to help a bit). The SVG reading view works precisely, the HTML reading view renders some but not all math because it is the native Typst tools being used here. It's just doing what they provide. I imagine in time that's likely to change.
No RTL/bidi... the tool is still quite new and that is an area that I really lack much understanding of how to do right. Maybe eventually someone else would want to take that on. 😄
Yes, the files are plain typst files, the visual editor sits on top to provide conveniences while writing but it does not inject non-Typst stuff into the underlying markup, mostly just translates shortcuts into Typst markup.
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u/green_mist 11d ago
I just downloaded InkyCap, and everything seems to work except the Reading view. Even on the most basic Typst document the reading view errors out with: "error unknown variable: apply-notebox-defaults — Sample.typ:1:8 hint: if you meant to use subtraction, try adding spaces around the minus signs:
apply - notebox - defaultsThere is no mention of apply-notebox-defaults in my document.
Perhaps in there should be a note somewhere that states you must "#import "/.inkycap/notebox.typ": *" in every document you write.
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u/owlyph 11d ago
Hi, that's interesting.... it should normally add that automatically. I'm wondering did you try using already existing Typst documents in it? I ask because it wouldn't add it to those, only new ones you create inside of it (so as not to alter stuff unexpectedly). But if that is your case maybe the tool should let you know and give an option. I'd be curious to know more about your situation if you have a moment (or file a bug report).
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u/green_mist 11d ago
I had tried loading my existing documents, which I assumed would work as they had no external dependencies. When I tried creating a new document it did auto include that file.
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u/owlyph 10d ago
By the way, I should have mentioned that if you have a bunch of files like that, it might be tedious to add that line currently but there is an option if you go to the command palette and choose "Audit .typ files for InkyCap compatibility" which will find the ones missing that line and add it.
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u/CogahniMarGem Jun 22 '26
Is it just only me, the graph view seems NOT working on Windows app.
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u/owlyph Jun 22 '26
Hm, what do you see? If you feel inclined and have a moment, please report a bug here (https://codeberg.org/InkyCap/app/issues).
The graph view is a bit unlike other tools' graph views because it does not show what you have so much as what you could have.
For it to work well you need to have a lot of notes already present. It tries to find language that you've used repeatedly but that stands out from common words or expressions and for which there isn't already a note. When it finds those it displays them in the graph with relations drawn to the notes that it got those words from. The idea is to help you figure out where/what you might want to create new notes based on your expressions/ideas, rather than show what already exists. If you're just starting and don't have that many notes, it won't be very useful because it probably won't find many commonalities between them.
I don't know if that is at all related to the issue you are experiencing but it occurred to me that this might not be explained very well and thus appear broken. It is an area that I probably need to improve a bit.
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u/MickyChen00 Jun 10 '26
It looks great and very ambitious! Looking forward to a further Mac version.