Personal outliner built with Rust.
phase 8.2-8.4: performance pass, README, design.md reconciliation
- README.md: build/run, graph directory format, keyboard reference, query language reference with examples, documented deviations from spec
- design.md: D3 rewritten to reflect gpui-component removal; Risks section updated; new Reconciliation section
- performance pass finding: cold start at 100k blocks is ~1.5-2s using the real GraphIndex::rebuild + SearchIndex (not Spike S3's simplified stand-in), over the original ~1s budget — documented as a known gap, not fixed (personal-notebook scale is expected to stay well under 100k blocks)
8.1 (week-long dogfood checkpoint) intentionally left unchecked — requires real usage over time.
graham.systems
(Jul 12, 2026, 2:52 PM -0700)
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README.md
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# Trawler
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A personal, keyboard-first, Rust-native outliner in the mold of Logseq DB: a
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CRDT-backed block graph, a journal-first navigation model, and a Steel
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(Scheme) query engine for live, first-class queries over your notes.
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Built with [GPUI](https://www.gpui.rs/) (Zed's UI framework), [Loro](https://loro.dev/)
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(CRDT storage), [Steel](https://github.com/mattwparas/steel) (embedded Scheme),
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and [tantivy](https://github.com/quickwit-oss/tantivy) (full-text search).
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## Status
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This is the `trawler-mvp` change (see `openspec/changes/trawler-mvp/`) — a
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single-user MVP, not a released product. Phases 1–7 (block graph core, search,
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Steel queries, the outline editor, journal/navigation, and query blocks) are
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implemented; Phase 8 (hardening) is in progress. See
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`openspec/changes/trawler-mvp/tasks.md` for the exact task-by-task status and
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`design.md` for the architecture decisions and known deviations from the
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original spec.
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## Building and running
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Requires the Rust toolchain pinned in `rust-toolchain.toml` (currently
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`1.94.0`, `x86_64-pc-windows-msvc`) — `rustup` will pick it up automatically.
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Windows is the only platform this has been built and run on; GPUI's Windows
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backend is confirmed to use real Direct3D 11 rendering (see design.md Spike
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S1), but other platforms are untested.
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```sh
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cargo run -p trawler
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```
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On first launch, this creates a graph directory and opens straight to
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today's journal page, focused and ready to type.
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Development commands:
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```sh
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cargo check --workspace
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cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets -- -D warnings
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cargo test --workspace
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cargo fmt --all
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```
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Some tests are expensive (they build synthetic 100k-block graphs) and are
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`#[ignore]`d by default:
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```sh
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cargo test -p trawler-core --release -- --ignored
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```
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### Where your data lives
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By default the graph directory is `%APPDATA%\trawler\graph`. Override it with
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the `TRAWLER_GRAPH_DIR` environment variable (useful for running multiple
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graphs, or a scratch graph while developing):
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```sh
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TRAWLER_GRAPH_DIR=/tmp/my-test-graph cargo run -p trawler
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```
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## Graph directory format
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Everything under the graph directory is derived from, or is, a single Loro
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CRDT document — there is no separate database. Deleting any file *except*
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`snapshot.loro`/`updates.log` and re-launching rebuilds it from scratch.
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```
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<graph-dir>/
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snapshot.loro # the last compacted full snapshot of the Loro doc
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updates.log # length-prefixed incremental update blobs since the
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# last snapshot — replayed on top of it when opening
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search-index/ # tantivy full-text index; entirely disposable,
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# rebuilt automatically if missing
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```
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- **`snapshot.loro` + `updates.log` are the only source of truth.** Every
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other file (the search index) can be deleted safely; it's rebuilt
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transparently on next open.
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- The Loro document holds one movable tree (container name `"outline"`).
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Tree roots are pages; everything else is a block. A block's text lives in
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its metadata map under the `content` key (a mergeable Loro text); typed
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properties (used by query-block `table`/`prop`/`prop-eq`, and the `query`
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flag that marks a block as a query block) live under `properties`.
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- Writes are append-only and crash-safe: `updates.log` entries are
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length-prefixed, `fsync`'d before a write is considered acknowledged, and a
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torn trailing write (a kill mid-append) is detected and simply dropped on
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next open rather than treated as corruption.
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- There's no explicit "compact" action wired into the UI yet — the update
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log only shrinks if `GraphStorage::compact()` is called, which currently
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only happens implicitly in tests. On a long-running graph this log can grow
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large enough to make the next cold start noticeably slower (see
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"Performance notes" below) — a good Phase-8-adjacent follow-up would be an
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idle-time or startup-triggered auto-compact.
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## Keyboard reference
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**Global:**
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| Key | Action |
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|---|---|
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| `Ctrl+K` | Quick open — fuzzy switcher over pages, tags, and journal-date shortcuts |
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| `Ctrl+F` | Full-text search |
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| `Alt+Left` / `Alt+Right` | Navigation back / forward |
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| `Ctrl+.` / `Ctrl+,` | Zoom into / out of the focused block |
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| `Ctrl+Enter` | Create a page from an uncreated tag/page/date view |
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| `Ctrl+Shift+Q` | Toggle the focused block as a query block |
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**While editing a block:**
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| Key | Action |
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|---|---|
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| `Enter` | Split into a new sibling block at the cursor |
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| `Shift+Enter` | Insert a newline within the block |
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| `Tab` / `Shift+Tab` | Indent / outdent under the previous sibling |
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| `Backspace` at start of block | Merge into the end of the previous sibling |
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| `Alt+Up` / `Alt+Down` | Move the block up/down among its siblings |
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| `Up` / `Down` at a content boundary | Move focus to the previous/next visible block |
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| `Ctrl+Enter` | Follow the reference at/nearest the cursor |
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| `[[` / `#` | Open reference/tag completion |
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| `Escape` | Dismiss an open completion popup |
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Standard text editing (arrows, shift-select, `Ctrl+A`/`C`/`V`/`X`, Home/End)
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works as expected within a block.
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## Query blocks
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Any block can become a **query block**: press `Ctrl+Shift+Q` while it's
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focused, then write a Steel (Scheme) expression as its content. The result
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renders live beneath it, re-evaluating a few hundred milliseconds after you
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stop typing, without leaving the block.
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A query evaluates in a read-only, capability-scoped Steel VM — only the
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primitives below are registered; there is no way to mutate the graph, touch
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the filesystem, or reach the network from a query. A runaway (non-terminating)
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query is interrupted after its time budget and shown as "Query timed out"
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rather than freezing the app.
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### Primitives
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Each of these returns a **set** (as a sorted list of block ids) unless noted:
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| Primitive | Returns |
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|---|---|
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| `(tag 'name)` | Blocks tagged `#name` |
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| `(ref "name-or-id")` | Blocks referencing that page, tag, date, or block id |
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| `(prop "key")` | Blocks with property `key` set |
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| `(prop-eq "key" "value")` | Blocks where property `key` equals `value` |
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| `(date-range "2026-07-01" "2026-07-31")` | Blocks referencing a date in that range |
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| `(descendants "peer@counter")` | Descendants of the given block id |
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| `(search "text")` | Full-text search hits for `text` |
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| `(and set set)` / `(or set set)` / `(not set)` | Native set intersection/union/complement |
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| `(table set '("col1" "col2"))` | Projects each block's named properties into a table result instead of a plain list |
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| `(filter (lambda (id) ...) set)` / `(map f set)` | Per-block Scheme predicate/transform over an already-narrowed set |
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Plus a small stdlib: `car`, `cdr`, `cons`, `null?`, `bool-not` (note: `not` is
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the set-complement primitive above, not boolean negation — use `bool-not` for
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that), `string-append`, `string-contains?`, `string-equal?`, and
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`+ - * / = < > <= >=`.
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### Examples
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```scheme
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; Everything tagged #project that also references [[rust]]
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(and (tag 'project) (ref "rust"))
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; Same set, projected as a table with due/priority columns
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(table (tag 'project) '("due" "priority"))
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; Blocks referencing a date in July, excluding anything tagged #done
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(and (date-range "2026-07-01" "2026-07-31") (not (tag 'done)))
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; Full-text search composed with a tag filter
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(and (search "bycatch") (tag 'research))
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```
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## Known deviations from the original spec
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Documented in more detail in `design.md`'s Decisions/Open Questions and
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inline in the relevant source files; summarized here:
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- **Quick-open matching is substring, not true fuzzy matching.** `fuzzy_contains`
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is a case-insensitive substring check, not a scored fuzzy algorithm (no
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subsequence matching, no ranking by match quality). The spec's own example
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scenario (`trawl` → `trawler-design`) happens to be a substring match, so it
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passes, but a query like `twdsn` would not match `trawler-design` the way a
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real fuzzy matcher would.
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- **Query-block syntax highlighting is a hand-rolled tokenizer**
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(`trawler::scheme_highlight`), not tree-sitter as the spec names. See
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design.md D4 for the rationale — query blocks are short single expressions,
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not source files, so a real incremental-reparse tree-sitter grammar buys
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little here.
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- **`gpui-component` was dropped mid-project** in favor of a custom
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`editor::BlockEditor` built directly on GPUI's raw primitives. The original
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design leaned on it for the one-hot editor; its baked-in Enter/Tab/Backspace
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keybindings and a default-width bug fighting the outline's own semantics
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made it more friction than help. See design.md D3.
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- **Cold start at large scale exceeds the original ~1s budget.** Spike S3's
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cold-start number (Loro doc load + a stand-in index rebuild) came in at
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~667ms at 100k blocks, but that stand-in didn't account for the real
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`GraphIndex::rebuild` (which parses references out of every block's
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content) or building the tantivy search index from scratch. Measuring with
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the actual code at 100k blocks: doc load ~0.2–0.9s (much slower
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uncompacted — see the graph-format note above), `GraphIndex::rebuild`
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~0.6–1.1s, `SearchIndex` build ~0.5s — roughly **1.5–2s total**, over
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budget. The two rebuilds are independent of each other and currently run
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sequentially; running them concurrently (they don't share mutable state)
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is the obvious first optimization if this matters before a real corpus
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gets that large. Personal note-taking corpora are expected to stay well
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under 100k blocks for a long time, so this isn't blocking, but it's a real
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number, not the original hoped-for one.
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## Project layout
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```
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crates/
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trawler-core/ # block graph, Loro storage, indexes, Steel query engine,
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# search — no UI dependencies, fully testable headless
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trawler/ # GPUI app: outline editor, journal view, navigation,
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# query block UI
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```
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openspec/changes/trawler-mvp/design.md
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openspec/changes/trawler-mvp/design.md
···
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- *SQLite* — remains the boring fallback if the in-memory index ever needs persistence.
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- **Owning the in-memory graph wins for a Steel-specific reason**: query quality depends on how tightly Scheme primitives map to index operations. Owning the structure lets `(and ...)` compile to native set intersection rather than composing through a third party's API assumptions.
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### D3: GPUI + gpui-component for the shell; one-hot block editor
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### D3: GPUI for the shell; custom one-hot block editor
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Exactly one live text input exists at any time — the focused block. All other blocks are read-only rendered views (styled Markdown). Focus movement detaches the editor, re-renders the block, reattaches to the target.
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- **Why one-hot**: this is Logseq's own pattern and the cheat code that makes a native-GUI outliner tractable — one good single-block input (gpui-component provides the base) plus a fast rendered view, instead of a Zed-grade multi-buffer editor.
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- **Why GPUI**: "feels like Zed" is a stated requirement, and GPUI *is* that feel. `gpui-component` supplies inputs, lists, scrollbars. Helix/Zed precedents exist for the tree-sitter integration Steel editing needs.
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- **Why one-hot**: this is Logseq's own pattern and the cheat code that makes a native-GUI outliner tractable — one good single-block input plus a fast rendered view, instead of a Zed-grade multi-buffer editor.
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- **Why GPUI**: "feels like Zed" is a stated requirement, and GPUI *is* that feel.
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- **Risk accepted**: GPUI's Windows backend is its youngest and docs are thin; the developer is on Windows. Gated by Spike S1.
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- **Revised mid-project: `gpui-component` was dropped (task 5.5).** The original plan (below, in the S1 findings) used `gpui-component`'s `Input` for the one-hot editor. In practice its own baked-in Enter/Tab/Backspace keybindings fought every attempt to give those keys outline semantics (split/indent/merge) instead of textarea semantics — GPUI resolves the deepest/most-specific (keystroke, context) binding first, and there's no way to have an ancestor context offer a *different* action for a keystroke the focused element's own context already claims. Combined with a default-width bug that rendered the editor as a collapsed sliver, and a fix for one visual bug (a dropdown arrow) that ended up center-aligning all body text app-wide, continuing to fight the component stopped being worth it. `editor::BlockEditor` (in `crates/trawler`) replaces it: built directly on GPUI's own `EntityInputHandler`/`Element` primitives (modeled on GPUI's own `examples/input.rs`, extended to multiple lines), owning 100% of its keybindings with no third-party defaults to override. This also ended up being the base the query-block syntax highlighting (D4, task 7.2) hooks into — highlighting a `gpui-component` `Input`'s text wasn't an option that existed.
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### D4: Steel (Scheme) as the query language, capability-scoped
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···
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## Risks / Trade-offs
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- [GPUI Windows backend is young; breakage or missing pieces on the primary dev machine] → Spike S1 first: stand up a GPUI window with gpui-component input on Windows before any other UI work. Fallback documented if blocked: re-evaluate frontend (Tauri) rather than abandon — core is UI-independent.
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- [GPUI Windows backend is young; breakage or missing pieces on the primary dev machine] → Spike S1 first: stand up a GPUI window on Windows before any other UI work. Fallback documented if blocked: re-evaluate frontend (Tauri) rather than abandon — core is UI-independent.
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- [Steel eval can't be cleanly interrupted → runaway query freezes previews] → Spike S2: prove background-thread eval with cancellation/timeout. Fallback: run query VM in a dedicated thread that can be dropped/respawned; queries are stateless so a killed VM costs nothing.
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- [Loro doc grows unboundedly / rebuild-at-startup becomes slow at real scale] → Spike S3: synthetic 100k-block graph; measure snapshot size, load time, index rebuild time. Loro supports snapshot compaction; budget: cold start under ~1s at 100k blocks.
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- [One-hot editor feels laggy on focus transitions (detach/render/reattach per keystroke navigation)] → treat editor transition latency as a benchmark from the first prototype; pre-render adjacent blocks if needed.
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- [gpui/gpui-component API churn (pre-1.0)] → pin revisions; vendor patches if needed; upgrade deliberately, not continuously.
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- [Loro doc grows unboundedly / rebuild-at-startup becomes slow at real scale] → Spike S3: synthetic 100k-block graph; measure snapshot size, load time, index rebuild time. Loro supports snapshot compaction; budget: cold start under ~1s at 100k blocks. **Miss found in the task 8.2 performance pass**: measuring with the real `GraphIndex::rebuild` and `SearchIndex` (S3's own rebuild was a simplified stand-in that didn't parse references or build a search index) puts cold start at 100k blocks around 1.5–2s, not under 1s — see README.md "Known deviations" for the numbers and the obvious first fix (the two rebuilds are independent and currently run sequentially).
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- [One-hot editor feels laggy on focus transitions (detach/render/reattach per keystroke navigation)] → treat editor transition latency as a benchmark from the first prototype; pre-render adjacent blocks if needed. No dedicated benchmark was built; the custom `BlockEditor` (D3) reuses the same entity across a session and only reconstructs on focus change, and no latency complaints surfaced during interactive verification, but this was never measured numerically.
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- [`gpui-component` API churn (pre-1.0)] → moot: dropped entirely (D3). GPUI itself is still pinned (`gpui = 0.2.2`) and not upgraded during the project.
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- [Steel pre-1.0 API changes] → pin; the query API surface is ours, so churn is contained to the embedding layer.
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- [Everything-is-derived means index bugs silently corrupt query results] → index rebuild is cheap and deterministic: golden tests compare incremental index state against full rebuild after randomized edit sequences.
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···
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- **Query surface shape**: datalog-style relations as Scheme macros vs. functional set combinators (current lean: combinators first — they fall out of the API design; a relational macro layer can be pure Scheme on top later).
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- ~~**Similar-blocks UX**: where do suggestions surface (dedicated panel vs. inline footer on focused block)? Defer to prototype feedback.~~ **Resolved (task 6.8)**: dedicated panel, refreshed on every focus change and shown below the backlinks panel whenever a block is focused. An inline footer would have meant every row renderer (Markdown view, `BlockEditor`, `gpui::list`'s per-item height accounting) needed to know about a second kind of variable-height footer alongside backlinks; a shared panel reused the pattern (and the snippet-rendering code) already built for backlinks/search with no new plumbing.
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## Reconciliation (task 8.4, 2026-07-04)
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A pass comparing every requirement/scenario in `specs/*/spec.md` against the
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implementation. Full detail lives in README.md's "Known deviations" section
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and inline in the relevant source; summarized here:
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- **Met as specified**: block graph core (2.x), search (3.x), Steel query
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engine (4.x) including capability scoping and containment, the outline
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editor and keybindings (5.x), journal/navigation (6.x), and query blocks
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(7.x) — all have passing tests exercising their spec scenarios directly
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(test names reference the scenario they cover).
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- **Met, with a documented simplification**: quick open's fuzzy matching
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(substring, not scored/subsequence matching — the spec's own example
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scenario happens to be a substring match, so it passes, but the general
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"fuzzy-matches" wording is broader than the implementation).
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Query-block syntax highlighting (hand-rolled tokenizer, not tree-sitter —
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see D4).
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- **Architecture changed from the original plan, requirement still met**:
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the one-hot editor no longer uses `gpui-component` (see D3); the outline
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editor requirements themselves (spec: outline-editor) are unaffected by
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which primitives implement them.
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- **Budget miss found during the pass**: cold start at 100k blocks (see the
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Spike S3 risk entry above and README.md). Not a functional gap, but the
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original ~1s number was optimistic once the real index/search rebuild
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cost is included.
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- **Not built**: 8.1 (week-long dogfood checkpoint) requires the user
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actually using the app daily over real time; nothing to reconcile against
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specs yet since it hasn't happened.
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## Spike Findings (2026-07-02, go/no-go checkpoint)
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150
+4
-4
openspec/changes/trawler-mvp/tasks.md
+4
-4
openspec/changes/trawler-mvp/tasks.md
···
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## 8. Hardening & Wrap-up
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- [ ] 8.1 Dogfood checkpoint: use trawler as the daily driver for one week; file and triage findings
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- [ ] 8.2 Performance pass against spec budgets (editing latency, query latency, index freshness, cold start)
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- [ ] 8.3 Documentation: README (build/run), graph directory format notes, query language reference with examples
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- [ ] 8.4 Reconcile artifacts: update design.md decisions/open questions to match reality; verify specs against implementation
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- [ ] 8.1 Dogfood checkpoint: use trawler as the daily driver for one week; file and triage findings — **needs the user**, not something that can be done from this side; nothing to check off until a week of real usage has happened
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- [x] 8.2 Performance pass against spec budgets (editing latency, query latency, index freshness, cold start) — see design.md Reconciliation and README "Known deviations"; cold start at 100k blocks is the one real budget miss found
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- [x] 8.3 Documentation: README (build/run), graph directory format notes, query language reference with examples
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- [x] 8.4 Reconcile artifacts: update design.md decisions/open questions to match reality; verify specs against implementation