Note Keeper (dsh-note-keeper)

Note Keeper is a plugin for the DeepSeek Harness (DSH) web GUI: an Obsidian-compatible, local-first notes app that lives in the left sidebar and opens as a full-page panel. It stores notes as plain Markdown files in a regular directory on disk, so any Obsidian-compatible sync method keeps it in step with a phone or another desktop. It also exposes a set of notes_* tools so an AI in the same DSH chat can read, search and write the user's notes under a clear set of guardrails.

Author: Loukas "Luca" Tzekos. License: MIT.

Feature overview

• Left-sidebar "Notes" entry: a row in the sidebar panel list (sidebar.panellist slot) that opens Note Keeper as a full-page panel registered in the main-column keyed slot.
• Obsidian-compatible vault: plain Markdown files under a normal directory (default ~/NoteKeeper, configurable via vault). Wikilinks ([[Note]]), embeds (![[Note]]), #tags (including nested project/alpha), YAML frontmatter, callouts (> [!warning]), and a .trash folder for recoverable deletes, exactly the way Obsidian lays them out.
• Rename-safe wikilinks: moving or renaming a note rewrites every [[wikilink]]/![[embed]] that pointed at it, in every other note, the same way Obsidian does.
• Live sync from any writer: an fsnotify-backed watcher reindexes any change (this app's own writes, Obsidian on the same machine, a sync client landing a phone edit) and pushes a Server-Sent Events refresh to every open browser tab; a 5-minute full rescan repairs anything a dropped kernel event missed.
• Full-text search: accent-insensitive for both Greek and Latin script (Καλημέρα ≈ καλημερα ≈ ΚΑΛΗΜΕΡΑ), last-word prefix matching while typing, and "quoted phrase" matching. Filterable by tag (nested tags included) or folder.
• Tags, backlinks, outline, graph: a tag browser with counts, a backlinks panel per note, a heading outline, and an interactive local graph view (note/attachment/tag nodes, plus "ghost" nodes for unresolved links, just like Obsidian's graph).
• Quick capture & daily notes: one shortcut appends a timestamped bullet (or a - [ ] task) to Inbox.md; another opens or creates today's daily note at Daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md, expanding Templates/Daily.md when present.
• Templates: any note under the Templates/ folder can be used to start a new note, with {{title}}, {{date}} and {{time}} expanded.
• Audio notes: record with MediaRecorder, send the clip to the dsh-voice plugin's /api/voice/stt endpoint with the language pinned (Greek and English are first-class; several others are offered; "auto" lets the engine detect), optionally run a text-polish pass, and save the result as a Markdown note with nk-type: audio frontmatter (language, engine, duration) embedding the audio clip.
• Retro paint canvas: an MS-Paint-style drawing editor: pencil, brush, eraser, spray and more, over a raster canvas plus an editable vector shape layer. Saving writes a PNG, the vector JSON, and (optionally) OCR'd text from the drawing into a single "drawing" note.
• OCR: Tesseract (eng+ell by default) runs over pasted/attached images and over paint-canvas drawings to extract text (handwriting included, on a best-effort basis).
• Attachments: upload, paste, or drag-and-drop images, audio, video and PDF, with inline previews; risky file types (HTML, SVG, JS, …) are always forced to download so an uploaded file can never script the DSH origin. Large files: uploads above 64 MiB are sent as 64 MiB slices (begin / chunk… / finish), because an edge such as Cloudflare refuses any single request body over 100 MB. The server stages the slices in a hidden .nk-up-* file, renames it into place at finish, and removes it on any failure or abort. The assembled-file cap is 1 GiB (maxAttachBytes).
• Client-side zero-knowledge encryption: see the Security model section below. Encrypted notes/attachments/folders are opaque to the server, to sync tools and to AI tools; only the browser that knows the password can read them.
• Conflict detection: every save carries the mtime it was read at; a concurrent edit from another device, Obsidian, or an AI tool produces a conflict banner offering "load disk version", "keep both" or "overwrite with mine", instead of silently clobbering data.
• Autosave: edits are saved 1.2 s after the last keystroke, and flushed immediately when the tab is hidden or closed.
• Live preview editor: CodeMirror 6 with Obsidian-style live preview: links, wikilinks and tags are clickable while you type; source, split and reading modes too.
• Connect: the Note Keeper Sync plugin for Obsidian (desktop and mobile, two-way, paired with a one-time code, signed requests), WebDAV for other apps, and a two-way cloud mirror (Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, iCloud Drive, S3) via rclone. See docs/SYNC-PROTOCOL.md.
• Import: Obsidian/Bear/Logseq/Joplin Markdown, HTML, Evernote .enex, Google Keep Takeout, Notion export zips.
• AI Enhance: proofread, format and interlink a note with the DSH default model (or any model chosen in its settings), previewed as a diff before anything changes.
• 12 AI tools (notes_*), see the AI tools table.

Screenshots

v0.2: live preview (links and tags clickable), AI Enhance diff review, Connect (Obsidian pairing):

Captured from the live DSH GUI with a custom theme (dark mode).

Install

Note Keeper installs like any other DSH web plugin, from a checkout: it ships a small Go daemon that is built on your machine, so dsh plugin add github:... alone is not enough.

1. Build it (Go ≥ 1.22 and Node ≥ 22.5):

   git clone https://github.com/lucagiftzek/dsh-note-keeper.git
   cd dsh-note-keeper
   npm ci
   npm run build      # bin/notekeeperd (Go daemon) + lib/client.js (browser bundle)
   

   Optional: sudo apt install tesseract-ocr tesseract-ocr-ell for OCR.

2. Link it into the web profile, ~/.dsh/profiles/web/package.json: add "dsh-note-keeper": "link:/path/to/dsh-note-keeper" to dependencies and "dsh-note-keeper" to dsh.profile.bundles, then run pnpm install there.

3. Optional configuration goes on the plugin row in ~/.dsh/profiles/web/cordis.patch.yml:

   - id: dsh-note-keeper
     config:
       vault: ~/NoteKeeper          # or point at an existing Obsidian vault
       trustedHosts: [dsh.example.com]
       aiWrite: true
       aiDelete: true
   

4. Restart dsh-web. A Notes row appears in the left sidebar.

Kill switch: DSH_NOTE_KEEPER_DISABLE=1 in the dsh-web environment, or - id: dsh-note-keeper / disabled: true in cordis.patch.yml.

Configuration

All keys are optional; defaults come from DEFAULTS in lib/index.js.

Key	Default	Meaning
vault	~/NoteKeeper	Vault directory (created if missing). Point at an existing Obsidian vault to share it. ~ is expanded; the NK_VAULT environment variable overrides this.
trustedHosts	[]	Extra hostnames (besides loopback) the browser gate accepts as same-origin.
requireCookie	true	Require the DSH browser-session cookie on every request (reads included).
binary	bin/notekeeperd inside the package	Path to the notekeeperd Go binary.
tesseract	tesseract	Tesseract binary/name used for OCR.
dailyFolder	Daily	Folder for daily notes (Daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md).
inboxNote	Inbox.md	Target note for quick capture.
attachmentsFolder	attachments	Default folder for uploads.
maxAttachBytes	0 (= 1 GiB)	Cap for one assembled attachment (daemon env NK_MAX_ATTACH).
templatesFolder	Templates	Folder scanned for note templates.
aiWrite	true	Whether the notes_* tools may create/modify notes.
aiDelete	true	Whether the notes_* tools may delete (trash) notes/folders.

Keyboard shortcuts

Global (active while the Note Keeper page is mounted):

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+Alt+N	New note
Ctrl+Alt+C	Quick capture dialog
Ctrl+Alt+D	Open/create today's daily note
Ctrl+E	Toggle preview mode (while a note is open)
/ (outside a text field)	Focus the search box

In the editor textarea:

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+B / Cmd+B	Bold
Ctrl+I / Cmd+I	Italic
Ctrl+S / Cmd+S	Save now
Tab / Shift+Tab	Indent / outdent the current line
Enter	Continue a list, numbered list or task item; an empty item ends the list
[[	Triggers wikilink autocompletion (arrow keys to navigate, Enter/Tab to accept, Escape to dismiss)

Obsidian sync guide

Note Keeper's vault is a plain directory of Markdown files laid out the way Obsidian expects, there is no proprietary database or format. This is deliberate: it is what lets the vault be edited from more than one place at once.

• Same machine: open the vault folder (default ~/NoteKeeper) directly as an Obsidian vault. Every change either app makes appears live in the other (Note Keeper watches the folder with fsnotify and refreshes over SSE within a fraction of a second; Obsidian watches it natively).
• Other desktops and mobile: use whatever you already rely on to sync a plain folder, Syncthing (Android and desktop), Obsidian Sync, iCloud or Möbius Sync on iOS, or git. Note Keeper does not care which one is used: it treats every external write to the vault the same way it treats its own, live.
• Encrypted notes and Obsidian: an encrypted note is still a syntactically valid Markdown file (YAML frontmatter with nk-encrypted: v1 plus a nk-cipher fenced block of base64 ciphertext), so Obsidian opens it without errors, it just shows the placeholder warning text and the opaque ciphertext block, never the plaintext. Encrypted attachments (.nkenc files) are opaque binary blobs to Obsidian. Only Note Keeper can decrypt and display encrypted content, Obsidian has no matching plugin. Open and unlock encrypted notes in Note Keeper.
• Unrecognisable attachments: a file uploaded into an encrypted folder is sealed in the browser (AES-256-GCM) before it leaves the page and stored under a random name (enc-<18 hex>.nkenc). Its real name, size and type live inside the ciphertext (an NKM1 header), so neither the connection (URLs, bodies, chunk boundaries aside) nor the vault, the cloud mirror or the daemon ever learns what the file was. Note Keeper shows the real name after you unlock it. Older NKE1 blobs without the header still open. The note embed inserted on upload references the opaque name, so type links by pasting from the upload, not by guessing the file name. Sealing happens in memory: budget about 4x the file size in browser RAM (roughly 1.2 GB for a 300 MB file).

AI tools

Registered on ctx.get('tools') when the tool registry is available (the sidebar and daemon still work if it is not). Every call goes through the same daemon API the browser uses, so path validation, conflict detection and folder-lock rules apply identically.

Tool	Purpose
notes_list	List the vault (folders/notes, titles, tags, type, encrypted flag), optionally narrowed to a folder.
notes_search	Full-text search (accent-insensitive, prefix + phrase matching), filterable by tag or folder.
notes_read	Read one note's Markdown, frontmatter, tags, links and backlinks.
notes_create	Create a new Markdown note (title → safe file name, optional folder and tags).
notes_update	Modify an existing note: replace, append, prepend, or replace_text (exact-match substitution). Conflict-safe: reads, applies, writes with baseMtime, retries once on conflict.
notes_move	Rename/move a note or folder; rewrites wikilinks that pointed at it.
notes_delete	Move a note or folder to the vault trash (.trash, recoverable).
notes_mkdir	Create a folder (and parents).
notes_capture	Quick-capture text into Inbox.md (or another target), optionally as a task.
notes_daily	Open/create the daily note for a date, optionally appending text.
notes_tags	List every tag with its note count.
notes_links	Backlinks + outgoing links for one note, or a vault-wide connectivity summary.

notes_create/notes_update/notes_move/notes_mkdir/notes_capture/notes_daily are disabled (return a clear error) when aiWrite: false; notes_delete is also gated on aiDelete: false. Encrypted notes and folders are always off-limits to models: notes_read refuses to return ciphertext, and any write tool that would touch an encrypted .md file is refused by the daemon with code: "locked": the model is told to ask the user to do it in Note Keeper instead.

Security model (summary)

Two independent layers protect the vault; see docs/ARCHITECTURE.md for the full threat model.

1. Server-side request gate (lib/security.js): every browser request to /note-keeper/api/* must pass four checks (R1 loopback peer, R2 trusted Host/origin, R3 CSRF markers on mutations, R4 the DSH session cookie) before it is proxied to the Go daemon, which itself only listens on loopback and requires a fresh per-spawn secret (X-NK-Secret) that never appears in a browser-visible surface.
2. Client-side zero-knowledge encryption (src/client/crypto.js): passwords are stretched with PBKDF2-SHA-256 (600,000 iterations) into a non-extractable AES-256-GCM key that lives only in an in-memory key ring (auto-forgotten after 10 minutes idle, or on demand). Encryption can be applied per-note or per-folder; a folder carries a .nk-lock.json marker with a KDF salt and a key verifier, never a key or the plaintext. The server categorically refuses to store plaintext inside a locked folder, and the notes_* AI tools can never read or write encrypted content: "Warning: Loss of the password results in permanent, unrecoverable data loss." There is no recovery path by design.

Development / testing

npm run build          # build:server (Go) + build:client (esbuild bundle)
npm run build:server   # go build -> bin/notekeeperd
npm run build:client   # esbuild -> lib/client.js
npm run check          # node --check over every host-half .js file
npm test               # test:server + test:host
npm run test:server    # go vet ./... && go test -race -count=1 ./...   (server/)
npm run test:host      # node --test test/*.test.mjs                     (host + client logic)

Server tests live under server/internal/*/**_test.go (vault, index, api). Host/browser-logic tests live under test/*.test.mjs (client logic, graph-core, paint-core, a jsdom UI smoke test, and host.test.mjs for the node host half).

Project layout

dsh-note-keeper/
├── lib/                  host half (Node/ESM, loaded by dsh-web)
│   ├── index.js          plugin entry: wires daemon + route + notes_* tools
│   ├── daemon.js         spawns/supervises notekeeperd, HTTP client to it
│   ├── proxy.js          /note-keeper/api/* route: gate + stream to daemon
│   ├── security.js       R1-R4 browser request gate
│   ├── tools.js          notes_* AI tool definitions
│   └── client.js         built browser bundle (esbuild output, checked in)
├── src/client/           browser half source (React, built by scripts/build.mjs)
│   ├── index.jsx         registers the sidebar row + main panel
│   ├── App.jsx           page shell: vault model, views, keyboard shortcuts
│   ├── Editor.jsx        Markdown editor (toolbar, preview, autocompletion)
│   ├── Recorder.jsx      audio note recording (MediaRecorder)
│   ├── Paint.jsx / paint-core.js   retro drawing canvas
│   ├── Graph.jsx / graph-core.js   force-directed graph view
│   ├── crypto.js         zero-knowledge encryption primitives
│   ├── upload.js         chunked upload transport + sealed uploads
│   ├── api.js            fetch client for /note-keeper/api
│   ├── markdown.js       Markdown rendering (marked + DOMPurify) + outline
│   ├── tree.js           vault-tree helpers
│   └── styles.js         CSS
├── server/               the Go daemon (notekeeperd)
│   ├── cmd/notekeeperd/  main: flags, wiring, HTTP listen
│   └── internal/
│       ├── vault/        filesystem operations, path safety, locks
│       ├── index/        in-memory search/link/tag index
│       ├── watch/        fsnotify watcher + SSE hub
│       ├── note/         Markdown/frontmatter/wikilink parsing
│       └── api/          the daemon's HTTP handlers
├── bin/notekeeperd       built Go binary (build:server output)
├── scripts/build.mjs     esbuild script for the client bundle
├── test/                 host + client-logic tests (node --test)
└── cordis.patch.yml      the one bundle row dsh-web loads

License

MIT, see LICENSE.

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Built by Luca Tzekos, who also makes Job Opportunities API: employer-direct job data with per-field provenance you can verify yourself, free to read and available as an API. If this plugin is useful to you, a star on this repo or a look at jobopportunitiesapi.org is the best thanks.