LinksDocs

Upload documents, highlight passages, and link highlights, whole documents and topics into a graph — like Obsidian's graph view, but for the documents you read.

Run

Needs Node.js (no other dependencies, no build step).

Double-click to start — the server starts and the app opens in your browser:

• Windows: start.bat
• Linux: LinksDocs.desktop (or start.sh). Some file managers ask once to allow launching it; on GNOME right-click → Allow Launching. If the files lost their executable bit (e.g. after unzipping), run chmod +x start.sh LinksDocs.desktop.

Keep the terminal window open while you work; closing it stops the server. Starting it again while it's already running just opens the browser tab.

Or from a terminal:

node server.js --open

then open http://localhost:5173.

links.tr

The link network is saved to links.tr in the app folder, after every change (indicator in the top bar). It is JSON with:

• documents — id, name and type of each document
• topics
• highlights — which document, position, text and colour
• links — the two endpoints (doc:…, hl:…, topic:…) plus readable from / to descriptions

Several browser windows can work on the same links.tr: each checks the file every few seconds and picks up changes made elsewhere (or by hand in an editor), and a save that would overwrite changes it hasn't seen is refused by the server and merged instead. A tab still running an older version of the app can't save — reload it.

links.tr wins when the app starts, so you can edit it, version it in git or copy it to another machine. Document text and original PDFs stay in the browser (IndexedDB); if links.tr mentions a document this browser doesn't have, its highlights and links are kept and re-attach when you upload a file with the same name and type.

If the app is served by something other than server.js, it still works but keeps links only in the browser (“Browser only” in the top bar).

How to use

• Upload Markdown (.md) and PDF files — .txt, .docx and .html work too (button or drag & drop).
  • Markdown is rendered formatted (headings, lists, code, tables, [[wikilinks]]) by the built-in renderer in js/markdown.js.
  • PDFs are shown as real pages (pdf.js canvas) with a selectable text layer on top, so you highlight right on the page. The original file is stored in the browser; ↗ opens it in a new tab. PDFs uploaded before originals were stored fall back to extracted text — re-upload them to get the page view. Detached LaTeX accents (matem´atica) are shown merged (matemática).
• Images (.png, .jpg, .gif, .webp, .svg, …) can be uploaded as documents too.
• Areas: drag a rectangle on an image, or on a PDF page with the ▭ button in the pane header switched on (Alt+drag works any time). An area is a highlight like any other — colour, caption (Rename), links, connector curves, a square node in the graph — and keeps a small thumbnail of the marked region that shows in its menu and in the graph tooltip.
• Documents appear in the graph as file icons, coloured by type (red PDF, purple Markdown).
• Notion-style look: each document is a page with an icon, title and properties (type, highlights, linked documents/topics — click a chip to open it). Light and dark themes follow the system; ◐ in the top bar switches.
• Click a document node in the graph (right) to open it. Click another one to open it alongside; a third replaces the pane you're not working in.
• Select text → pick a colour to highlight it, or Highlight & start link.
• Link: start a link from a highlight, the ⛓ button in a pane header (whole document), or a topic. Then click the target — a highlight, selected text, another ⛓, a library item, or any graph node. Esc cancels.
• Links between the two open documents are drawn as animated curves between the panes; new links animate in the graph too.
• + Topic creates a topic node you can link anything to.
• Toggle Highlights in the graph toolbar to collapse highlights into their documents.
• Everything is saved in the browser (IndexedDB). Use Export / Import for backups or to move between machines.

Code layout

File	Purpose
server.js	Static server + /api/links read/write of links.tr
start.bat, start.sh, LinksDocs.desktop	Double-click launchers (Windows / Linux)
js/store.js	Data model, IndexedDB persistence, links.tr sync, change events
js/importers.js	File → text (PDF via pdf.js, DOCX via mammoth)
js/markdown.js	Dependency-free Markdown renderer
js/pdfview.js	PDF pages + text layer, lazy canvas rendering
js/graph.js	Canvas force-directed graph, link animations
js/reader.js	Side-by-side panes, highlighting, connector curves
js/app.js	UI wiring: linking flow, popups, library, upload
js/samples.js	Demo workspace