Bookmarks from the command line

January 21, 2024

Update OCT 2024: Since writing this post I’ve moved my Database projects to using Turso in place of Xata and use Cloudflare for my CDN.

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I’m a big fan of bookmarking ALL THE THINGS. If you tag diligently, you end up with a personal mini-web of searchable links. A lot of daily work is pulling up a project spec, design or Github issue. With searhable bookmarks finding that URL is trivial. You’d be amazed at how much time you save in the day.

For years I managed bookmarks with Pinboard and an Alfred frontend on my Mac. When I moved to Linux that wasn’t an option, and I looked for systems that would let me self-host my data. Enter Buku, a command-line bookmark manager created by the maker of NNN. With a little bit of FZF hacking, I was able to make a nice frontend to search through them.

Buku has a lot of features I don’t use, and its data model focuses more on exporting rather than syncing. Like my screenshot project, my dream was to have a local-first editing experience similar that could sync with a Xata database. I ended up building just that by tying some Fish, FZF and TypeScript together in a project I dubbed Rollerball.

Rollerball’s source is available on Github if you want something similar for yourself. The video below shows off its strengths: searching and editing your bookmarks fast through the command line.