Outliner

A fast, keyboard‑first outliner for capturing, organizing, and zooming through ideas. Runs as a desktop app via Tauri, and can be served in the browser for quick local testing.

What is an outliner?

An outliner lets you write in a structured tree of bullets, expanding/collapsing detail to think at the right level. It’s great for notes, plans, drafts, and managing complex projects.

If you’re new to the concept, these are good starting points:

• Dave Winer's Outliners
• Wikipedia: Outliner

Highlights

• Instant navigation: zoom in/out, expand/collapse, jump around with the keyboard
• Clean, themeable UI: built-in light, dark, and synthwave‑84 themes
• Local-first: JSON-based storage designed for speed and simplicity
• Cross-platform foundation: Tauri + TypeScript

Install

Choose one of the following:

• Option A — Prebuilt app (recommended)
  Prebuilt binaries will be published on the project’s Releases page.
  Link: https://github.com/AngeloR/outliner/releases

• Option B — Build from source
  See Prerequisites, then:

git clone https://github.com/AngeloR/outliner
cd outliner
npm install
npm run tauri build

Prerequisites (for building locally)

• Node.js and npm: Tested with Node 24.5.0 and npm 11.5.1 (Volta configured)
• Rust toolchain: Stable Rust + Cargo (required by Tauri)
• Platform deps:
  • macOS: Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install)
  • Windows/Linux: See Tauri prerequisites
• Tauri CLI: Installed automatically via npm scripts; you can also npm exec tauri -- --help

Helpful links:

• Tauri prerequisites
• Install Rust

Run and build

• Desktop (dev):

  npm run tauri dev

• Desktop (release build):

  npm run build # bundle frontend
  npm run tauri build # produce a signed, distributable app in src-tauri/target

• Web (serve the static UI for quick testing):

  npm run build # bundle frontend to public/assets
  npm run dev # serve ./public at http://localhost:3000

  Note: Some desktop-only features (like filesystem access) require the Tauri app.

Keyboard-first by design

Press the in‑app help (?) to see available shortcuts, or explore the src/keyboard-shortcuts/ directory. Common actions include creating bullets, indent/outdent, lift/lower, and zoom.

Keyboard shortcuts

Quick cheatsheet of key combinations and what they do. Keys are shown literally (Meta = Cmd on macOS).

Key	Action	Context
ctrl + ;	Toggle visibility of sidebar	navigation
ctrl + t	Open theme selector	navigation
shift + /	Display help modal	navigation
ctrl + o	Open outline selector	navigation
ctrl + n	Create new outline	navigation
g	Scroll to the very top of the document	navigation
shift + g	Scroll to the very bottom of the document	navigation
j	Move the cursor to the next sibling of the current node	navigation
k	Move the cursor to the previous sibling of the current node	navigation
l	Move the cursor to the first child element of the current node	navigation
h	Move the cursor to the parent element of the current node	navigation
z	hide all children node of the current node	navigation
t	Toggle current node as a task	navigation
shift + 4	Enter "Edit" mode and place the cursor at the end of the editable content	navigation
i	Enter "edit" mode and place the cursor at the start of the editable content	navigation
tab	Add a new node as the child of the current node	navigation
enter	Add a new node as the sibling of the current node	navigation
shift + d	Delete the current node	navigation
shift + h	Lift the current node to be a sibling of the parent node	navigation
shift + l	Lower the current node to be a child of the previous sibling node	navigation
shift + k	Swap the current node with the previous sibling node	navigation
shift + j	Swap the current node with the next sibling node	navigation
shift + .	Zoom into current node (virtual view)	navigation
shift + ,	Exit zoom and return to full outline	navigation
esc	Stop editing the current node and return to "navigation" mode	editing
enter	Stop editing the current node and return to "navigation" mode	editing
meta + shift + v or ctrl + shift + v	Paste clipboard as plain text (no formatting)	editing

Screenshots

Development

Useful commands:

npm run webpack-local # development build with watch
npm run build # production bundle
npm run dev # serve ./public for quick browser testing
npm run test# run unit tests (Jest)

Acknowledgements

• Inspired by decades of outlining work, especially by Dave Winer. See outliners.com and scripting.com for history and ideas.