rizin-notebook/README.md

Rizin Notebook

A notebook for binary analysis with rizin. Keep notes, commands, and scripts organized per binary.

Requires rizin 0.7.0 or later.

What it does

Each notebook page is tied to one binary. It stores the binary itself, its SHA-256 hash, and a list of cells:

• command cells - a rizin command and its output
• script cells - a JavaScript snippet run on the server against a rizin pipe
• markdown cells - freeform notes

Pages are stored as individual .rznb files (SQLite databases) in ~/.rizin-notebook/. They can be exported and imported as single self-contained files.

Components

• Go server (rizin-notebook) - the main application. Serves a web UI, exposes a protobuf + JSON REST API, stores everything in per-page .rznb SQLite files.
• rizin-notebook-plugin - a rizin core plugin (C). Adds NB commands to rizin so you can interact with the notebook from the rizin shell.
• cutter-notebook-plugin - a Cutter plugin (C++/Qt6). Adds a Plugins -> Notebook dock and menu to Cutter.

The plugins are optional. The Go server works standalone with just a browser.

Compatibility note

The Go server is platform-independent. The plugins depend on the Rizin version they are built against.

If standalone rizin and Cutter ship different Rizin versions on your machine, build rz_notebook once for each. Both builds can talk to the same server and share the same .rznb data.

Simple rule:

• one server
• one rz_notebook build per Rizin version in use
• one Cutter plugin if you want the Cutter dock

Screenshots

Project screenshots are organized under docs/images/.

Web UI

Figure 1. Homepage view (with cell & scope based search, supporting multiple modes.)

Figure 2. Settings page for environment configuration, keyboard shortcuts, and server-side behavior.

Figure 3. Command autocomplete in the web console, helping discover and complete Rizin commands quickly.

Figure 4. Built-in command help and search modal for exploring command descriptions and arguments.

Plugin Integration

Figure 5. Rizin core plugin integration, enabling notebook interaction directly from the Rizin shell.

Figure 6. Cutter plugin integration view showing the notebook experience inside the Cutter interface.

Figure 7. Additional Cutter plugin workflow view demonstrating possible notebook usage(s).

Building the server

go build -o rizin-notebook .

Embed the version string during release builds:

go build -ldflags "-X main.NBVERSION=$(git rev-parse --short HEAD)" -o rizin-notebook .

Running

./rizin-notebook

Opens at http://127.0.0.1:8000/ by default.

Flags:

-bind 127.0.0.1:8000    address and port to listen on
-root /                  URL path prefix
-notebook /path/to/data  data directory (default: ~/.rizin-notebook)
-debug-assets /path      load templates from disk instead of embedded
-debug                   enable HTTP request logs

Set RIZIN_PATH to override the rizin binary path used for pipe execution.

Building the rizin plugin

See rizin-notebook-plugin/README.md.

Building the Cutter plugin

See cutter-notebook-plugin/README.md.

If Cutter ships its own embedded Rizin, the rz_notebook plugin loaded by Cutter must be built against that same bundled Rizin version.

Data storage

Each page is a .rznb file in the data directory. It is a SQLite database containing:

• page metadata (title, original filename, binary storage key, SHA-256 hash)
• cells (type, content, output, timestamps)
• the binary blob itself
• per-page config (key/value)

The server maintains a catalog.db index for fast listing across all pages.

On first run the server automatically migrates any pages from an older monolithic notebook.db format into the per-page .rznb layout.

API

All NB plugin commands use the protobuf API (Content-Type: application/x-protobuf). The schema is in proto/notebook.proto.

A parallel JSON API at /api/v1/json/... is used by the Cutter plugin and the browser UI.