Nors

Personal ops notes that ride a PocketBase instance you already run.

Nors is not an application you deploy. It is one migration and one static page, copied into a PocketBase directory you already have. The database, auth, HTTP server and backups are already running — a dedicated notes app would duplicate all of them.

What it is

Notes live as cards on a dashboard, filed under four kinds: Diagram, Runbook, Reference, Scratch. An agent drafts in markdown, you publish from the panel — paste a blob, fix the title, pick a kind, done. Bodies render as markdown and Mermaid fences become diagrams in the reader.

Writing stays minimal on purpose: title, kind, pinned, body. The slug grows out of the title and the summary out of the first clean body line, so there is nothing else to fill in.

Highlights

| | Feature | How it works | | --- | ------- | ------------ | | 🧩 | No infrastructure of its own | Files copied into an existing PocketBase. No container, no second database, no extra port. | | 📝 | Write four things, nothing else | Title, kind, pinned, body. Slug and summary derive themselves. | | 📊 | Diagrams without a plugin | Mermaid loads only on pages that hold a fence; everything else never downloads it. | | ↔️ | Order by dragging | Native HTML5 drag-and-drop renumbers sort; pinned cards stay first by construction. No DnD library. | | 📥 | Seeds are upserts | bun run import-seeds matches by slug — re-running updates instead of duplicating. | | 🛡️ | Unsaved work asks first | Leaving the editor with edits pops a guard instead of silently dropping the draft. | | 📵 | No telemetry | Zero outbound requests. The page talks to your PocketBase and nothing else. |

Footprint

Measured with du:

| | | | --- | --- | | Installed files | 3.6 MB — migration 4 KB, page the rest | | First visit | ~138 KB — entry JS ~121 KB (gzip ~41 KB, including the DOMPurify sanitiser), CSS ~17 KB | | The other 3.4 MB | Mermaid diagram chunks, fetched only when a reader page holds a fence | | Database growth | one nors_notes row per note, inside the existing pb_data | | Extra processes | none | | Extra ports | none |

If PocketBase is already running, the marginal cost of Nors is the file sizes.

Install

Install into a PocketBase directory with the packaged CLI:

bunx @burakboduroglu/nors install /path/to/pocketbase

This copies the migration and built page; it never touches pb_data. Then restart PocketBase so the migration runs. If it was already running, stop it before copying and start it afterwards — PocketBase watches its directories and can race a service manager doing the same.

For a source checkout and remote host, the deploy/ installer performs the stop → copy → start sequence. The page is not committed, so build it first:

bun --cwd web install && bun run build
scp -r pb_migrations pb_hooks pb_public deploy/install.sh host:/tmp/nors-stage/
ssh host
sudo /tmp/nors-stage/install.sh /tmp/nors-stage

The page is served at /nors/. Gate /nors and /api/collections/nors_notes in Cloudflare Access the way /subs/ is gated (see deploy/access-caddy.md). Then load the three seed notes through the API:

NORS_PB_URL=https://your.host NORS_PB_EMAIL=... NORS_PB_PASSWORD=... \
  bun run import-seeds

How it works

browser ──▶ /nors/                            static page, superuser login
browser ──▶ /api/collections/nors_notes/*      superuser only, CRUD + reorder
Glance  ──▶ 127.0.0.1:8090/api/nors/summary    counts + recent titles
agent   ──▶ drafts markdown ──▶ editor ──▶ publish

Routes are hashes: #/ dashboard, #/n/<slug> reader, #/edit/<slug|$new> editor. /nors/?new=1 is the stable external entry point for a new note; it consumes the query and opens the $new editor route.

Security

The nors_notes collection has null API rules, which in PocketBase means superuser only. The dashboard holds a superuser token in localStorage — anyone with the browser profile has the keys, documented rather than hidden. There is no audit log and no second user; this is a single-operator surface behind Cloudflare Access, not a multi-user app.

The Glance summary hook has no PocketBase authentication because Glance reads it over loopback. The public reverse proxy must return 404 for the exact /api/nors/summary path; deploy/patch-caddy-nors-summary.py installs that guard. Do not expose this endpoint publicly: it includes recent note titles.

What it deliberately does not do

No in-app LLM calls. No public notes or team sharing. No wiki search, tag graph, or version history UI. No reminders. It does not replace a vault or a knowledge base — it is the live dashboard above them.

Stack

PocketBase for storage, auth and HTTP. SolidJS + Vite UI compiled to static files under pb_public/nors/. marked for markdown, Mermaid on demand, no CSS library, no UI server. Bun as the package manager.

Develop the UI

Source lives in web/. The shipped page is built output — pb_public/nors/ is not committed; prepack builds it into the npm tarball, and a v* tag push publishes through .github/workflows/release.yml.

bun --cwd web install
bun run build      # root script — emits pb_public/nors/
bun run dev        # local UI; /api proxied to :8090 (NORS_PB_PORT to move it)

Against a tunneled production box: ssh -N -L 8090:127.0.0.1:8090 host, then bun run dev — the browser stays on localhost, so neither CORS nor Cloudflare Access is in the path.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.