Amytis is an elegant, open-source framework for building a personal digital garden: a living knowledge space where ideas grow from raw notes to refined writing. It is built with Next.js 16, React 19, and Tailwind CSS v4, with a strong focus on readability, structure, and long-term content ownership.
Amytis is built around a simple path from rough to refined:
- Flow: Capture raw daily thoughts and fragments.
- Articles: Refine one idea into a clear essay.
- Series: Connect related articles into a curated narrative.
- Books: Distill mature knowledge into structured chapters and parts.
Each stage builds on the previous one, so your garden can evolve naturally.
- Digital Garden Philosophy: Non-linear navigation through tags, series, authors, books, flows, and chronological archives.
- Interconnected Knowledge:
- Wiki-links: Bidirectional linking (
[[Slug]]) between all content types. - Backlinks: Automatic "Linked References" display on notes.
- Knowledge Graph: Interactive visual map of your content connections.
- Wiki-links: Bidirectional linking (
- Full-text Search: Fast, static client-side search across all content (Cmd/Ctrl+K) powered by Pagefind.
- Structured Content:
- Series: Multi-part content organization with manual or automatic ordering.
- Books: Long-form content with explicit chapters, parts, and a dedicated reading interface.
- Notes: Atomic, evergreen concepts for personal knowledge management.
- Flows: Stream-style daily notes or micro-blogging for quick thoughts.
- Rich MDX Content:
- GitHub Flavored Markdown (tables, task lists, strikethrough).
- Syntax-highlighted code blocks.
- Mermaid diagrams (flowcharts, sequence diagrams, etc.).
- LaTeX math via KaTeX.
- Raw HTML support for custom layouts.
- Elegant Design:
- Minimalist aesthetic with high-contrast typography.
- Light/Dark mode with automatic system detection.
- Four color palettes: default (emerald), blue, rose, amber.
- Responsive layout optimized for reading.
- Horizontal scrolling for featured content on the homepage.
- Table of Contents: Sticky TOC with scroll tracking, reading progress indicator, and active heading highlight.
- Flexible Content Structure:
- Flat files (
post.mdx) or nested folders (post/index.mdx). - Co-located assets: keep images inside post folders (
./images/). - Date-prefixed filenames:
2026-01-01-my-post.mdx. - Draft support for posts, series, books, and flows.
- Flat files (
- Author Ecosystem: Per-author profile pages with bio, avatar, and social links. Posts are filterable by author; an optional author card appears at the end of each post.
- Performance & SEO:
- Fully static export with optimized WebP images.
- Open Graph and Twitter card metadata for every content type.
- JSON-LD structured data (
BlogPosting,Book,Article) for Google rich results. - RSS/Atom feed with configurable format (
rss|atom|both) and content depth (full|excerpt). - Feed auto-discovery links in
<head>, native sitemap generation. - Multilingual reading time estimate (supports Latin and CJK).
- Integrations:
- Analytics: Umami, Plausible, or Google Analytics.
- Comments: Giscus (GitHub Discussions) or Disqus.
- Internationalization: multi-language support (en, zh) with localized
site.config.ts.
- Content CLI Tools: Create posts, series, and import from PDFs or image folders.
- Modern Stack: Next.js 16, React 19, Tailwind CSS v4, TypeScript 5, Bun.
- Elegance by default: Typography, spacing, and color should feel intentional out of the box.
- Content over configuration: Writing and publishing should be simple file-based workflows, not CMS-heavy setup.
- Markdown-first, not markdown-limited: Keep authoring portable while supporting rich output (math, diagrams, code, wikilinks).
- Ship what you need: Features are modular through
site.config.ts; disable sections you do not use. - Plain text, long-term ownership: Content stays in Markdown/MDX so it remains versionable and portable.
Scaffold a new Amytis site with one command:
bun create amytis my-garden
cd my-garden
bun devThe scaffold command downloads the latest tagged Amytis release, installs dependencies, and patches site.config.ts and package.json with your project metadata.
-
Install Dependencies:
bun install
-
Start Development Server:
bun dev
Visit http://localhost:3000.
Search in dev: the Pagefind index is generated during
bun run build:dev. Run it once before testing Cmd/Ctrl+K locally, and re-run it after content changes. -
Build for Production (Static Export):
bun run build
The static site will be generated in the
out/directory with optimized images. -
Development Build (faster, no image optimization):
bun run build:dev
## Core
bun dev
bun run lint
bun run validate
## Build & Deploy
bun run build
bun run build:dev
bun run clean
bun run deploy # Deploy to Linux/nginx server (requires .env.local)
## Test
bun test
bun run test:unit
bun run test:int
bun run test:e2e
## Create Content
bun run new "Post Title"
bun run new-weekly "Weekly Topic"
bun run new-series "Series Name"
bun run new-note "Concept"
bun run new-flow
## Import / Maintain
bun run new-from-pdf ./doc.pdf
bun run new-from-images ./photos
bun run new-flow-from-chat
bun run import-book
bun run sync-book
bun run series-draft "series-slug"Drop .txt or .log files into imports/chats/, then run:
bun run new-flow-from-chatCommon flags: --all, --dry-run, --author "Name", --append, --timestamp.
Import history is stored in imports/chats/.imported.
All site settings are managed in site.config.ts:
export const siteConfig = {
// ...
nav: [
{ name: "Home", url: "/", weight: 1 },
{ name: "Flow", url: "/flows", weight: 1.1 }, // Add Flows to nav
{ name: "Series", url: "/series", weight: 1.5 },
{ name: "Books", url: "/books", weight: 1.7 },
{ name: "Archive", url: "/archive", weight: 2 },
// ...
],
// ...
flows: {
recentCount: 5,
},
};Create .md or .mdx files in content/posts/.
Create daily notes in content/flows/YYYY/MM/DD.mdx or content/flows/YYYY/MM/DD/index.mdx.
Create a directory in content/series/ with an index.mdx.
Books are for long-form, structured content. Create a directory in content/books/.
Create evergreen notes in content/notes/ (e.g., concept.mdx). Use [[wiki-links]] to connect them.
amytis/
content/
posts/ # Blog posts
series/ # Series collections
books/ # Long-form books
notes/ # Digital garden notes
flows/ # Daily notes (YYYY/MM/DD)
about.mdx # Static pages
public/ # Static assets
src/
app/ # Next.js App Router pages
books/ # Book routes
notes/ # Note routes
graph/ # Knowledge graph
flows/ # Flow routes
components/ # React components
lib/
markdown.ts # Data access layer
packages/
create-amytis/ # `bun create amytis` scaffold CLI
site.config.ts # Site configuration
MIT