Rabbit Hole Template

A static website template for public rabbit holes, research trails, field notes, and working ideas.

It gives you:

• contextual note panes
• an always-visible trail back to the starting note
• Obsidian-style wiki links
• hover previews before opening links
• search over public notes
• direct URL trails for shared rabbit holes
• a publish: true guardrail
• no backend required

Quick Start

npm install
npm run build
npm run preview

Then open the local preview URL shown in your terminal. npm run build parses _notes/ and writes the static site to _site via _site/build.js, then bundles the React stacking UI with Vite; npm run preview serves that built output — this is what Vercel deploys.

There's also npm run dev, which starts Vite's dev server for the React UI in src/. It does not regenerate note pages, so it won't show your notes — re-run npm run build (and npm run preview) after editing _notes/ to see real content.

How Notes Publish

Write Markdown files in _notes/.

Only notes with this frontmatter publish:

publish: true

Private notes can stay in _notes/ with:

publish: false

The builder also understands fieldnotes: true for older Field Notes setups, but new notes should use publish.

What Makes A Rabbit Hole

A rabbit hole is a trail of linked notes, not a polished essay.

Good starter shape:

• what sent me in
• what I found
• what surprised me
• what it connects to
• what I might do with it
• sources or links

Use rabbit_hole frontmatter to group notes that belong to the same trail.

Note Links

Use Obsidian-style links:

[[Sample Rabbit Hole]]
[[Sample Rabbit Hole|custom label]]

The site turns those into contextual note links. A link to a note that does not exist yet, or to a publish: false note, shows as plain text instead of a broken link.

Recommended Frontmatter

---
title: My Note Title
description: A short description for search and previews
last_modified: 2026-06-06
publish: true
type: spark
rabbit_hole: my-rabbit-hole
status: open
energy: low
patterns:
  - attention
  - language
tags:
  - example
---

Useful type values:

• spark
• field-note
• term
• pattern
• source
• project-bridge
• index
• origin — the entry note for the site (see _notes/Index.md)
• draft — private, in-progress notes (pair with publish: false)

Useful status values:

• open
• simmering
• closed
• became-project

Deploying To Vercel

This repo includes vercel.json.

Vercel settings:

• Build command: npm run build
• Output directory: _site
• Install command: npm install

Link previews use og.png (replace it with your own 1200×630 image). On Vercel the builder points previews at your production domain automatically; on a custom domain or another host, set SITE_URL (for example https://notes.example.com) when building.

GitHub Template Setup

After pushing this repo to GitHub:

1. Open the repository settings.
2. Turn on Template repository.
3. Keep the repo public if you want others to use it.
4. Add topics like digital-garden, obsidian, markdown, static-site, rabbit-hole, and notes.

Obsidian

See OBSIDIAN.md.

Privacy Checklist

Before publishing a real notes site:

• keep your private vault separate from this repo
• copy or export only public-ready notes into _notes/
• confirm private notes use publish: false
• run npm run build
• check _site/notes.json for anything that should not be public

What This Template Is Not

This is not a hosted CMS, database app, or full private vault system.

It is a static website that publishes approved Markdown notes.