markdown-notes

Markdown Notes — Rigbox example

A tiny note-taking app on Python · Flask. Write a note in Markdown, hit save, and it's rendered to HTML on the page — headings, lists, tables, blockquotes, and fenced code blocks with Pygments syntax highlighting. Newest notes first. Notes are stored in SQLite and survive redeploys.

The single capability: persistence that survives redeploys

Two things work together here:

1. App-local dependencies. install: creates .venv with python3 -m venv --copies .venv, then installs the pinned requirements.txt. The service runs .venv/bin/gunicorn, without sudo or system pip changes.

2. Workspace volume-backed persistence. rig.yaml declares a data volume at /home/developer/data and opts the app into it with volumes: [data]. The SQLite DB lives at $DATA_DIR/markdown-notes.db, with DATA_DIR pointing at that mount. The synced app dir is wiped and re-rsynced on every deploy; the volume is not, so your notes stay put. The app mkdir -ps the dir at startup since a fresh workspace won't have it.

How the deploy works

Rigbox stages app code and its virtual environment in a managed release directory. Unchanged dependency inputs reuse the existing installation. Activation briefly restarts the service; the workspace and its persistent volume remain in place.

Deploy

cd markdown-notes && rig deploy

No required env — DATA_DIR is set in rig.yaml.

After deploy, look at

• The page — write a note with a fenced code block and watch it render with syntax highlighting.
• The persisted in SQLite pill and the note count in the header card.
• Redeploy (rig deploy) and confirm your notes are still there — that's the data volume surviving the rsync wipe.

Notes

• Persistence: yes. SQLite at $DATA_DIR/markdown-notes.db on the data workspace volume — durable across redeploys.
• Health: GET /healthz → {"ok": true}; the process binds 0.0.0.0:8080 under gunicorn.
• Stack: Python · Flask, served by gunicorn (installed via the recipe install: step).

Persistent app releases

The manifest uses workspace.deployment.strategy: incremental. Deployment stages app files separately from your editable checkout, then briefly restarts affected services on their original ports. The workspace, SSH sessions, and unrelated files stay in place. App rollback restores a retained release, not database contents or external side effects.

The explicit DATA_DIR=/home/developer/data uses the declared volume. Rigbox mounts a private app subdirectory there during installation and runtime. Existing legacy data at the volume root needs a reviewed migration into that subdirectory; deployment does not move or overwrite it.