Basking

A place to dump thoughts, jot notes and keep a journal. Named for the basking shark, which swims along with its mouth open and takes in whatever drifts by. One small binary, no database, no dependencies.

Your notes are plain markdown files in a folder you own. Basking is just a fast, comfortable way to write them and find them again, from a browser on your phone or your desk.

What it does

• Dump first, sort later. The box at the top of Notes is always ready. Type, press Ctrl+Enter, keep typing. An unsaved draft survives a closed tab.
• Tags by typing. Write #errands or #projects/basking anywhere in a note and it becomes a tag. The sidebar lists them. Numbers such as #12 and anything inside code are left alone.
• A page for each day. Today opens the day's journal page, with an Insert time button to stamp 20:15 where you are typing. Move between days, or read back over the Journal.
• Search across everything as you type: every word must match, and #tag words filter by tag.
• Markdown, rendered safely: headings, lists, checkboxes you can tick in place, quotes, code, links and bold and italic.
• Pin what matters. Delete goes to a trash first, with an Undo, and nothing is lost until you empty it.
• Autosave while you edit, and a warning (not a silent overwrite) if the same note was changed on another device.
• Send notes from anywhere. Make an API token and post text from a script, a phone shortcut or the basking add command.
• Take it with you. Download everything as a zip of .md files, or just copy the folder.

Installing on Linux (systemd)

curl -fsSL https://git.veillax.com/Veillax/basking/raw/branch/main/deploy/install.sh | sudo sh

This downloads the latest release (checking its SHA-256), installs /usr/local/bin/basking, creates a basking user, /etc/basking/ (settings) and /var/lib/basking/ (your notes), and writes the systemd service and /etc/basking/basking.env. It then tells you what to do next:

sudoedit /etc/basking/basking.env      # optional: the address and where notes are kept
sudo systemctl start basking
journalctl -u basking -f               # the first start prints your password here, once

Run it again to upgrade; your settings and notes are kept and a running service is restarted.

Options: --start (start the service straight away), --version v0.1.0, --listen 0.0.0.0:8490, --source (build from the repository with Go instead), and --uninstall (add --purge to delete settings and notes). Download the script and read it first if you prefer: it is deploy/install.sh.

Running it by hand

# download a release, or: go build ./cmd/basking
./basking serve

On first run it writes basking.json and prints a password once in the log. Open http://127.0.0.1:8490 and sign in. Notes go in ./data/notes/.

By default it only listens on 127.0.0.1. To reach it from your phone, put it behind an HTTPS reverse proxy, or expose it through Hammerhead, and set "cookie_secure": true and "trust_proxy": true in basking.json. Don't put it on the open internet over plain HTTP: it holds your private thoughts.

Docker: see Dockerfile and deploy/docker-compose.yml.

Commands

basking serve    [-config basking.json] [-listen addr] [-data dir]
basking password [-config ...]        set a new password (BASKING_PASSWORD or stdin); restart afterwards
basking token    [-config ...] NAME   make an API token (printed once)
basking add      [TEXT...]            send a note to a running Basking (needs BASKING_URL and BASKING_TOKEN)

Settings

basking.json holds listen (default 127.0.0.1:8490), data_dir (default data), the password hash, API token hashes, a signing secret, and cookie_secure and trust_proxy for use behind a proxy. The environment variables BASKING_CONFIG, BASKING_LISTEN and BASKING_DATA override the file location, address and notes folder.

Where your notes are

data/
  notes/20261031-143205-a1b2c3.md      one file per note
  notes/daily-2026-10-31.md            the journal page for a day
  trash/                               deleted notes, until the trash is emptied

A note file looks like this, so you can edit it with anything:

---
created: 2026-10-31T14:32:05.123Z
updated: 2026-10-31T14:35:00.456Z
pinned: true
---

Call the dentist #errands

A plain .md file you drop into notes/ is picked up too, with its file time as its date (name it with lower-case letters, numbers and dashes). Restart Basking to see files added by hand.

API

Sign in from a browser, or send Authorization: Bearer bsk_....

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" -H "Content-Type: text/plain" \
     -d "Call the dentist #errands" http://127.0.0.1:8490/api/notes

GET /api/notes?q=&tag=&view=all|pinned|daily|trash&offset=&limit=, POST /api/notes (JSON {"body": "..."} or plain text), GET|PUT|DELETE /api/notes/{id}, POST /api/notes/{id}/restore, DELETE /api/trash, POST /api/daily ({"date": "2026-10-31"}), GET /api/summary, GET /api/export.

Security notes

• The password is stored as a PBKDF2-SHA256 hash and API tokens as SHA-256 hashes. basking.json is written 0600. Failed sign-ins are rate-limited per address.
• Sessions are HttpOnly, SameSite=Strict cookies that last 30 days, signed with a secret from the settings file. They are not kept on the server, so a restart does not sign you out, and signing out only clears this browser's cookie. Changing the password signs out every browser.
• Every browser change needs a header a page on another site can't send. The page has a strict Content-Security-Policy and notes are never rendered as HTML.
• Notes are not encrypted on disk. Anyone who can read the folder can read your notes.

Honest limits

• One person, one password. There are no accounts, sharing or real-time collaboration.
• No attachments or images, and no offline mode: it needs the server to be reachable.
• Searching holds every note in memory, which is comfortable for tens of thousands of notes and not built for millions.
• Notes are only reloaded from disk when Basking starts.

Design

The dashboard follows the Lightwell design language, the same one Hammerhead and Megalodon use. See docs/design.md. node scripts/lint-design.mjs checks the rules a machine can check.

Development

go test ./...
go run ./cmd/basking serve

Releases are built by the Gitea workflow when a v* tag is pushed.

Licensed under the AGPL-3.0 (see LICENSE).