Running Markport yourself

There is no public instance, on purpose. This page is how you run your own. A Hebrew version of this page is at docs/he/install.md.

There are two ways to run it, and they share the same browser-side core. Pick whichever fits:

Static - a folder of files. Any static host, or your own machine. Vaults live in your browser (OPFS) or in a folder you pick on disk. Nothing is stored on a server.
Node server - stores vaults as real files on disk and pushes live updates to the client.

Before either one

You need Node 18 or newer, and a copy of Obsidian’s renderer.

git clone https://github.com/MusiCode1/markport
cd markport
node scripts/update-obsidian-mobile.js --version 1.12.7

That script downloads Obsidian’s official Android APK and unpacks its assets/public/ tree into vendor/obsidian-mobile/. Nothing is modified: the extracted bundle is byte-for-byte identical to Obsidian’s own. This repository does not contain or redistribute it - the download goes from Obsidian to your machine.

Pass --version 1.12.7 explicitly. Without it the script takes the latest release, which is 1.13 or newer and will not start. See “What does not work” on the home page.

Option 1: the Node server

cd src/runtime-server/server
npm install
npm start

Open http://127.0.0.1:3000.

npm run dev instead of npm start reloads on file changes.

Environment

Variable	Default
`PORT`	`3000`
`HOST`	`127.0.0.1`	set to `0.0.0.0` to accept connections from other machines
`VAULT_PATH`	`user-data/demo-vault`	the vault directory to serve

The server speaks plain HTTP and has no authentication. That is deliberate: TLS and auth are the operator’s job, and a reverse proxy in front of it (Caddy is a good choice) does both in a few lines. Do not expose it directly.

Option 2: the static build

cd src/deployments/cloudflare
npm install
npm run build

The result lands in .tmp/deployments/cloudflare/public/ - a plain directory of files. Serve it from anywhere: Cloudflare Pages, Vercel, Netlify, nginx, or a local static server.

The build also produces a small Worker (_worker.js) that does two things: it serves the app shell for /starter and /vault/<id>, and it proxies plugin downloads. On a host with no serverless functions the app still loads, but installing community plugins from inside it will not work, because a browser cannot reach github.com directly.

What you need to know either way

HTTPS is not optional. Browser storage (OPFS) is unavailable in an insecure context, so on a plain http:// host that is not localhost, creating a vault fails silently. localhost is fine for trying it out.

Chromium gives the complete experience. Folder vaults - opening a real directory on your disk - and auto-refresh on external file changes are Chromium-only. Firefox and Safari get browser-local vaults; Safari shipped OPFS writes much later than reads, so check your version.

Markport is not made by, affiliated with, or endorsed by Obsidian. What you run is your own instance, on your own machine, from a bundle you downloaded yourself.

Anything else - the architecture, the shim layer, the reasoning - is in the architecture notes and the repository.