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🚀 cppnb – The C++ Notebook Experience

Think Jupyter, but native. For C++.

cppnb is a blazing-fast, interactive, Jupyter-style notebook for C++, powered by Dear ImGui and a suite of lightweight tools. Designed for developers, learners, and researchers who want a clean, hackable, and offline-first way to prototype, visualize, and explore C++ code in notebook-style cells — just like Python notebooks, but natively compiled.

✨ Features

  • 🧠 Persistent Memory Between Cells — define variables, structs, classes, and use them across cells.
  • 💡 Markdown Cells — mix prose and code seamlessly.
  • 🎨 Syntax-Highlighted Editor — clean, minimalist, and beautiful.
  • 📈 Integrated Plots with ImPlot — visualize your data.
  • 🧵 Lightweight & Fast — built using C++ with zero runtime bloat.
  • 🖼️ Single Executable GUI App — no web server, no browser, just run and play.

Developed as a passion project while exploring AI/ML workflows in C++.
cppnb makes C++ as expressive as a notebook without compromising performance.

📸 Preview

Coming soon: GIFs, screenshots, and demo notebooks!

📦 Dependencies

⚙️ Getting Started

🔧 Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/Jeevan-04/cppnb.git
cd cppnb

📥 Install dependencies

brew install sdl2 cmake

Then setup third-party libraries:

mkdir third_party && cd third_party

# Core GUI and editor
git clone https://github.com/ocornut/imgui.git
git clone https://github.com/BalazsJako/ImGuiColorTextEdit.git
git clone https://github.com/juliettef/imgui_markdown.git
git clone https://github.com/epezent/implot.git

# GLAD setup (after downloading ZIP from glad.dav1d.de)
mkdir glad
unzip glad.zip -d glad

🛠️ Build the project

mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build .

🚀 Run it

./cppnb

📂 Project Structure

cppnb/
├── src/
│   ├── ui/           # Notebook UI, cells, themes
│   └── utils/        # Logging, markdown parser
├── third_party/      # External libraries
├── build/            # Build artifacts
├── fonts/            # fonts
├── main.cpp
├── CMakeLists.txt
└── README.md

🧪 Sample Workflow

Here’s what working with cppnb looks like:

  • 💻 Cell 1: Define a class, function, or variable.
  • ➕ Cell 2: Use that class, call the function — it works across cells!
  • 📋 Cell 3: Add Markdown commentary or LaTeX-style math.
  • 📉 Cell 4: Use ImPlot to graph vectors, arrays, or simulations.
  • 🧹 All Clean: Logs, errors, and execution time per cell are neatly shown.

🚣️ Roadmap

Feature Status
Persistent Global Execution ✅ Done
Markdown Cell with Live Render ✅ Done
Code Execution with g++ ✅ Done
Basic Plotting via ImPlot ✅ Done
Variable sharing across cells ✅ Done
Auto cell add/delete/clear ♻️ WIP
Improved Error Handling ♻️ In Progress
Cell Execution Shortcut (⌘+Enter) ♻️ Planned
Notebook Save/Load ♻️ Planned
Export as .cpp or .md 🧠 Idea
GitHub Publishing Support 🧠 Idea

🤯 Why This Matters

Most C++ dev tools are either:

  • ✅ powerful but too static and heavyweight (IDEs)
  • ✅ fast but too barebones and old-school (terminals)

cppnb hits the sweet spot — fast, modern, and designed for tinkering. Think of it as:

C++ meets visual prototyping + documentation in one tool.