nb

As of September 2024 I use nb as my primary note-taking and knowledge management program.

Install

On a Mac, it can be installed from Homebrew: brew install nb.

Set nb directory

I sync my nb documents via Syncthing, and therefore need the tool to use my Syncthing directory as its “home”: nb set nb_dir ~/Syncthing/nb.

Migration from Obsidian

To migrate my notes from Obsidian, I created the top-level directories (which nb calls “notebooks”) in ~/Syncthing/nb and copied the .md files from Obsidian into the appropriate directories.

I tidied some recent notes and added tags to the ones I’m currently working on (or for ongoing projects) to enable quicker discovery later on.

Set default editor

nb respects the $EDITOR environment variable, which I already had set. However it can also be set specifically for nb with nb set editor vim.

Simple usage

• nb to list all notes in the current notebook
• nb a to create a new note (short for “add”)
• nb e 23 to edit note with ID 23
• nb use work to switch to the “work” notebook
• nb t to list all tasks
• nb t o to list all open (“undone”) tasks
• nb home:a to add a note to the “home” notebook from anywhere
• nb work:t o to list all open tasks in the “work” notebook from anywhere
• nb t a "My todo" to add a new task as its own document

For more, check out the docs.