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skitty-notes | Markdown Sticky Notes app in Neovim in the Kitty Terminal

Do you spend most of your day in Neovim or Vim and would like to have a sticky notes app that uses vim motions, allows you to have markdown links, view paste images, use markdown headings, snippets, basically anything you can do in a Markdown file when in Neovim?

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By Christian Arzu
12 min read
skitty-notes | Markdown Sticky Notes app in Neovim in the Kitty Terminal

Contents

Table of contents

YouTube video

Pre-requisites

  • Skitty-notes will run in a terminal application, my main terminal is Ghostty, so I’m using kitty to run it on the right side
  • If you also want to use kitty, make sure you install it first

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    • Each one of the videos shown
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What is skitty-notes?

  • I’m used to vim motions way too much, and when I have to use an app that doesn’t have vim motions it’s pretty hard for me to move around and manipulate text
  • So I was looking for a sticky notes app that allowed me to do this, unfortunately there is not (that I’m aware of) so decided to use my own Neovim config with some slight modifications, and I can use all my keymaps, vim motions, etc
  • skitty-notes is the app you see on the right side

Image You can see skitty-notes on the right

Why the skitty-notes name?

  • Since I was looking for a sticky notes app and I decided to use kitty, just added an s in the front of kitty and that was basically it

Where do I store this skitty-notes.md file

  • In the video you’ll see that I store this file in icloud, but my personal recommendation is, don’t do that, instead of storing it in icloud, I personally keep track of the file in github, I created a private repo and a script that auto pushes changes, similar to the git plugin in obsidian
  • I did have the file in icloud and also at the same time I was tracking it in github, but was getting a github error fatal: mmap failed: Resource deadlock avoided
  • So my personal recommendation, to avoid issues, just keep it out of icloud or any other cloud syncing service

Apple Stickies app

  • If you’re on macOS there’s a native alternative for this, called the Stickes app
  • This application does not even support markdown formatting, let alone vim motions, it works as a basic and not useful sticky notes app

Image macOS Stickies app

Configure skitty-notes

Configure kitty

  • When I open kitty, I want it to automatically open a specific markdown file in neovim, so in my kitty.conf file you will notice that there’s a shell bash --login -c command
  • Starting neovim with the –listen flag to create a socket at /tmp/skitty-neobean-socket
    • This allows the ~/github/dotfiles-latest/scripts/macos/mac/400-autoPushGithub.sh script to trigger buffer writes and refresh lualine
  • I’m cleaning up the socket before start with rm -f /tmp/skitty-neobean-socket, otherwise it’s left there from a previous run and it just stops working
  • All the other settings and flags are documented already in my dotfiles, so go and read the comments in this file to understand more kitty.conf file
  • Read the heading below to understand how to open kitty in the same place and of the same size all the time
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shell bash --login -c "rm -f /tmp/skitty-neobean-socket && export PATH=\"/opt/homebrew/bin:$PATH\" && export NEOVIM_MODE=skitty && ~/github/dotfiles-latest/yabai/positions/kitty-pos.sh && NVIM_APPNAME=neobean nvim --listen /tmp/skitty-neobean-socket \"$HOME/github/skitty/skitty-notes.md\""

Open kitty in the same screen position

  • Notice that in the command above, there’s this section ~/github/dotfiles-latest/yabai/positions/kitty-pos.sh
  • This script is the one that allows me to open kitty in a specific section on my screen, and I always want to open it of the same size
  • This is done in macOS using a window manager, in my case I use Yabai, so if you go through the script you’ll be able to see the commands that position kitty and also resize it
  • Just remember to make your script executable
  • Many folks use Aerospace now instead of yabai, I haven’t tested it yet, because I think I’ll be missing some features, but I will, and probably create a video on how to make skitty-notes work with Aerospace
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yabai -m window --focus "$(yabai -m query --windows | jq '.[] | select(.app == "kitty") | .id')" --move abs:1369:39
yabai -m window --focus "$(yabai -m query --windows | jq '.[] | select(.app == "kitty") | .id')" --resize abs:231:400

Configure Neovim with NEOVIM_MODE=skitty

  • Remember that we’re passing an env var from kitty, NEOVIM_MODE=skitty, I use this variable to modify the skitty-notes configuration, an example is lualine, it looks different in my regular Neovim config compared to the skitty notes version
  • You can print the env var with:
  • :lua print(vim.env.NEOVIM_MODE)
  • Here we capture the environment variable to make it accessible to neovim
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vim.g.neovim_mode = vim.env.NEOVIM_MODE or "default"
  • Also in the same init.lua file I added this
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-- Delay for `skitty` configuration
-- If I don't add this delay, I get the message
-- "Press ENTER or type command to continue"
if vim.g.neovim_mode == "skitty" then
  vim.wait(500, function()
    return false
  end) -- Wait for X miliseconds without doing anything
end

Modify plugin settings based on NEOVIM_MODE

Modify options.lua file

  • I’d say this is the most important file, because this is where you modify for example the textwidth I normally configure that as 80 in my regular neovim config, but in skitty-notes I set it to 28, because I want it to move to the next line when typing
  • I don’t need relativenumbers when in skitty notes, so I disable that there
  • I also modify how winbar looks
  • Here’s part of the configuration to get you inspired
  • Notice the else at the bottom is for my regular neovim config
  • Remember that all of these configurations are in my dotfiles
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-- Conditional settings based on mode
if vim.g.neovim_mode == "skitty" then
  -- Line numbers
  vim.opt.number = false
  vim.opt.relativenumber = false

  -- Text width and wrapping
  vim.opt.textwidth = 28

  local colors = require("config.colors")
  vim.cmd(string.format([[highlight WinBar1 guifg=%s]], colors["linkarzu_color03"]))
  -- -- Set the winbar to display "skitty-notes" with the specified color
  -- vim.opt.winbar = "%#WinBar1#   skitty-notes%*"
  -- Set the winbar to display the current file name on the left and "linkarzu" aligned to the right
  vim.opt.winbar = "%#WinBar1# %t%*%=%#WinBar1# linkarzu %*"
else
  -- I never used relative line numbers, so fuck that
  -- Edit a few days after, I'll give them a try again, so re-enabled them
  vim.opt.relativenumber = true
  • I also change the cursor color in the same options.lua file
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-- I also want the vim.g.neovim_mode cursor color to be changed
-- Neovide cursor color, remember to set these in your colorscheme, I have
-- mine set in ~/github/dotfiles-latest/neovim/neobean/lua/plugins/colorschemes/eldritch.lua
-- Otherwise, my cursor was white
vim.opt.guicursor = {
  "n-v-c-sm:block-Cursor", -- Use 'Cursor' highlight for normal, visual, and command modes
  "i-ci-ve:ver25-lCursor", -- Use 'lCursor' highlight for insert and visual-exclusive modes
  "r-cr:hor20-CursorIM", -- Use 'CursorIM' for replace mode
}

Modify img-clip settings

  • Let me give you a few examples of some plugin configurations I changed that depend on the NEOVIM_MODE being used
  • One of the plugins I changed is ~/github/dotfiles-latest/neovim/neobean/lua/plugins/img-clip.lua, look at the configuration below
  • So if the neovim_mode is skitty, which means that I’m running the skitty-notes app, set the image directory to img
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      -- Conditional dir_path based on skitty mode
      dir_path = vim.g.neovim_mode == "skitty" and "img" or function()
        return vim.fn.expand("%:t:r") .. "-img"
      end,

Modify image.nvim plugin settings

  • I want to have smaller images in skitty-notes compared to my regular neovim config
  • Notice below that if on skitty-notes the image height is 30, but if on my regular neovim config its 40
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        -- This is what I changed to make my images look smaller, like a
        -- thumbnail, the default value is 50
        -- max_height_window_percentage = 20,
        -- max_height_window_percentage = 40,
        -- 40 for my default nvim config and 30 for skitty
        max_height_window_percentage = vim.g.neovim_mode == "skitty" and 30 or 40,

Modify lualine settings

  • Notice below, I’m disabling all the different lualine sections, except for lualine_x, because all I want to see in skitty-notes is if I have pending changes to push to github
  • Notice the else at the bottom of the code below, that means that if not in skitty-notes you will see all your lualine items when using our regular neovim configuration
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  opts = function(_, opts)
    if vim.g.neovim_mode == "skitty" then
      -- For skitty mode, only keep section_x and disable all others
      opts.sections = {
        lualine_a = {},
        lualine_b = {},
        lualine_c = {},
        lualine_x = {
          {
            "diff",
            symbols = {
              added = icons.git.added,
              modified = icons.git.modified,
              removed = icons.git.removed,
            },
          },
        },
        lualine_y = {},
        lualine_z = {},
      }
    else
      opts.sections.lualine_c = {

Disable some plugins for skitty-notes

  • I don’t need the CopilotChat.nvim plugin when using skitty-notes, so I want to disable it, notice how I do that below
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return {
  "CopilotC-Nvim/CopilotChat.nvim",
  enabled = vim.g.neovim_mode ~= "skitty", -- Disable for skitty mode
  opts = function(_, opts)

Do I need to use kitty?

  • No, you can use any terminal emulator, the only reason I use kitty is because it allows me to view images in neovim and I actually don’t use kitty for anything else
  • My secondary terminal, in case I need to bring up a 2nd one, is wezterm, but I could have used wezterm instead of kitty, no issues there
  • You can use any terminal even if it does not support images

Test out my Neobean config

  • If you don’t want to watch the video above, and you already have your own neovim config, and want to quickly get started and follow along in this tutorial
  • Run the git clone commands below to clone my dotfiles in your .config directory and we will run my config below
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mkdir -p ~/.config
git clone git@github.com:linkarzu/dotfiles-latest ~/.config/linkarzu/dotfiles-latest
  • Open the newly downloaded neobean config with:
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NVIM_APPNAME=linkarzu/dotfiles-latest/neovim/neobean nvim
  • You can create an alias in your .bashrc or .zshrc file to run my config
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alias neobean='NVIM_APPNAME=linkarzu/dotfiles-latest/neovim/neobean nvim'
  • Then to run this config, just run neobean
  • If you don’t even have neovim yet, of course you will need to install it first, so if you’re just getting started, I have a video for you:

Script to auto-push to GitHub

  • I created this script, remember that you can find it in my dotfiles, it automatically pushes the changes I have in skitty-notes and also in my obsidian repo every 3 min
  • ~/github/dotfiles-latest/scripts/macos/mac/400-autoPushGithub.sh
  • I’m not going to cover the script in this blogpost, but if you want me to create a video about it, let me know in the youtube comments

Reload kitty notes when restart yabai

  • I have a karabiner-elements keymap that restarts yabai, here’s the script ~/github/dotfiles-latest/yabai/yabai_restart.sh
  • Remember that this file is in my dotfiles
  • If you want to learn more about yabai, I have a video:

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