Zetteltypsten

Notes. Books. PDFs. One Typst-native workspace.

A GPU-accelerated, privacy-first desktop app for writing linked notes, publishing web books, and crafting beautiful PDFs — all in pure Rust, all in Typst.

Free. Open Source. Local-only. No telemetry. No webview.

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Why Zetteltypsten?

Most note apps render Markdown in a browser. Most PDF tools live behind a paywall. Most reference managers don't talk to your notes.

Zetteltypsten unifies them — on top of Typst, the modern successor to LaTeX — and renders everything natively on the GPU.

Features

🔗 Linked Notes

A Zettelkasten built on real Typst syntax. Use @ref and <label> to link notes, #metadata() to tag them, and watch the knowledge graph emerge. Inspired by Logseq and Obsidian.

• Native cross-note references — no custom DSL
• Live force-directed graph view
• Backlinks, tag index, full-text search

📚 Book Mode

Assemble notes into a published book — table of contents, chapters, parts. Inspired by mdBook, powered by Typst.

📄 PDF Authoring

Compose PDFs from the same notes you already write. Side-by-side preview with sub-frame incremental recompilation — typing feels instant. Inspired by the Typst Web App.

✏️ PDF Annotation

Drop papers into your vault, highlight, annotate, extract. Inspired by Zotero.

• DOI lookup → automatic BibTeX
• Annotation overlay with color-coded highlights
• One-click export to Markdown
• Search across the whole library

Architecture

100% Rust. No JavaScript. No WebView. No HTML rendering.

Layer	Technology
UI	GPUI (Metal / Vulkan)
Components	gpui-component
Compiler	typst 0.14
Renderer	Custom Frame Painter — Typst Frame → GPUI Canvas
Database	Limbo
Text Search	Tantivy
File watcher	notify + walkdir

The Frame Painter

The heart of the app. Typst compiles your source to a Frame tree; we walk it and paint each FrameItem directly to the GPU — glyphs, shapes, images, links — with zero rasterization round-trips.

Two modes share one renderer: a continuous note view and a paginated PDF preview.

Incremental Everything

A persistent ZettelWorld lets comemo memoize parsing, evaluation, and layout across keystrokes. Single-character edits recompile in 1–5 ms.

Getting Started

git clone https://github.com/your-org/zetteltypsten
cd zetteltypsten
cargo run --package zt-app -- /path/to/your/vault

A vault is just a directory of .typ files. Zetteltypsten creates a .zetteltypsten/ folder for its index — everything else is yours.

Keyboard

Shortcut	Action
Cmd+B	Toggle left sidebar
Cmd+R	Toggle right sidebar
Cmd+E	Edit / view mode
Cmd+N	New note
Cmd+S	Save
Cmd+W	Close tab

Project Layout

crates/
  zt-app/      Binary entry point
  zt-ui/       Workspace, Frame Painter, views
  zt-typst/    Typst World, compiler, font cache
  zt-core/     Domain types
  zt-editor/   Text buffer, cursor, history
  zt-index/    Vault indexer, link graph
  zt-db/       Limbo + Tantivy layer
  zt-fs/       Scanner + watcher
  zt-book/     Book builder

Principles

• Pure Rust. No JS, no WASM, no WebView.
• Native Typst. @ref, <label>, #metadata() — never a custom DSL.
• Local first. Your vault is plain files. Always.
• GPU first. Everything renders through GPUI's canvas.
• Use the toolkit. Lean on gpui-component instead of rebuilding UI from scratch.

License

Open source. See LICENSE.