pinstar

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/6010b25e-ab7d-4144-8bb3-17e55b99bd11

A terminal-based canvas editor compatible with the Obsidian .canvas JSON specification. Built with Rust and the Ratatui framework.

DISCLAIMER

pinstar is a sub project of clin-rs project, i separated it as a different project for those who only want to use/test this feature.

Usage

pinstar <FILE_NAME>.canvas

Features

• Obsidian Canvas Compatability: pinstar is compatible with any .canvas Obsidian canvases with just small issues.
• Spec Compliance: Read, write, and manipulate CanvasData serializable schemas (text, file, link, and group nodes).
• Interactive TUI: Pan, zoom, and navigate node relations inside the terminal using ratatui.
• Inline Editing: Built-in node content modification via ratatui-textarea.
• UUID Graph: Resilient node identification and edge resolution logic.

Compatability Issues

• Node titles are not protected when editing a Obsidian canvas. This is because Obsidian uses a different format for their node titles, will be fixed.
• Images render as simple nodes, i've experimented with Kitty Image Protocol to render images but it tanked the optimization and responsiveness of the app for now no image support.

Technical Stack

• Core Framework: Ratatui for terminal rendering.
• Serialization: Serde JSON for compliant parsing of the .canvas spec.
• Identifiers: uuid crate for RFC 4122 compliant node tracking.

Installation

Pre-built Packages

Pre-compiled binaries and system packages (.deb, .rpm, PKGBUILD) for Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora/RHEL, and Arch Linux distributions are available on the GitHub Releases page.

Via Cargo

You can install the crate directly from crates.io:

cargo install pinstar

Building from Source

Requires a standard Rust toolchain (MSRV 1.85 as specified in Cargo.toml).

cargo build --release