Novel

An open-source Notion-style WYSIWYG editor with AI-powered autocompletions.

Introduction · Installation · Deploy Your Own · Setting Up Locally · Tech Stack · Contributing · License

Introduction

Novel is a Notion-style WYSIWYG editor with AI-powered autocompletions.

Novel.mp4

Installation

To use Novel in a project, you can run the following command to install the novel NPM package:

npm i novel

Then, you can use it in your code like this:

import { Editor } from "novel";

export default function App() {
  return <Editor />;
}

The Editor is a React component that takes in the following props:

Prop	Type	Description	Default
completionApi	string	The API route to use for the OpenAI completion API.	/api/generate
className	string	Editor container classname.	"relative min-h-[500px] w-full max-w-screen-lg border-stone-200 bg-white sm:mb-[calc(20vh)] sm:rounded-lg sm:border sm:shadow-lg"
defaultValue	JSONContent or string	The default value to use for the editor.	defaultEditorContent
extensions	Extension[]	A list of extensions to use for the editor, in addition to the default Novel extensions.	[]
editorProps	EditorProps	Props to pass to the underlying Tiptap editor, in addition to the default Novel editor props.	{}
onUpdate	(editor?: Editor) => void	A callback function that is called whenever the editor is updated.	() => {}
onDebouncedUpdate	(editor?: Editor) => void	A callback function that is called whenever the editor is updated, but only after the defined debounce duration.	() => {}
debounceDuration	number	The duration (in milliseconds) to debounce the onDebouncedUpdate callback.	750
storageKey	string	The key to use for storing the editor's value in local storage.	novel__content
disableLocalStorage	boolean	Enabling this option will prevent read/write content from/to local storage.	false

Note: Make sure to define an API endpoint that matches the completionApi prop (default is /api/generate). This is needed for the AI autocompletions to work. Here's an example: https://github.com/steven-tey/novel/blob/main/apps/web/app/api/generate/route.ts

Here's an example application: https://github.com/steven-tey/novella

Deploy Your Own

You can deploy your own version of Novel to Vercel with one click:

Setting Up Locally

To set up Novel locally, you'll need to clone the repository and set up the following environment variables:

• OPENAI_API_KEY – your OpenAI API key (you can get one here)
• BLOB_READ_WRITE_TOKEN – your Vercel Blob read/write token (currently still in beta, but feel free to sign up on this form for access)

If you've deployed this to Vercel, you can also use vc env pull to pull the environment variables from your Vercel project.

To run the app locally, you can run the following commands:

pnpm i
pnpm build
pnpm dev

Cross-framework support

While Novel is built for React, we also have a few community-maintained packages for non-React frameworks:

• Svelte: https://novel.sh/svelte
• Vue: https://novel.sh/vue

VSCode Extension

Thanks to @bennykok, Novel also has a VSCode Extension: https://novel.sh/vscode

CleanShot.2023-09-02.at.09.36.03.mp4

Tech Stack

Novel is built on the following stack:

• Next.js – framework
• Tiptap – text editor
• OpenAI - AI completions
• Vercel AI SDK – AI library
• Vercel – deployments
• TailwindCSS – styles
• Cal Sans – font

Contributing

Here's how you can contribute:

• Open an issue if you believe you've encountered a bug.
• Make a pull request to add new features/make quality-of-life improvements/fix bugs.

Repo Activity

License

Licensed under the Apache-2.0 license.