rjot

A minimalist, command-line jotting utility that's fast, private, and git-friendly.

The vision

rjot is a tool for capturing thoughts at the speed of typing. It's built on a few core principles:

• CLI-first, not CLI-only: The terminal is the most powerful and frictionless interface for capturing text. rjot is designed to be a first-class citizen of your command line.
• Plain text is sacred: Your data is just a folder of Markdown files. It will always be readable, editable, and portable with or without rjot. No proprietary formats, no databases, no lock-in.
• You own your data: rjot will never push you to a proprietary sync service. It's designed from the ground up to empower you with control over your own data.

This project aims to be the perfect, minimalist companion for developers, writers, and anyone who lives in the terminal.

Features

• Instant capture: Jot down a thought instantly from the command line.
• Editor integration: Use rjot new to open your favorite editor ($EDITOR) for longer-form entries with template support.
• Powerful search & filtering: Full-text search, tag-based filtering, and time-based views (today, week, on <date>).
• Note management: Easily show, edit, or delete any note using a unique ID prefix or its recency (--last).
• Standard & configurable: Follows platform-specific conventions for data storage and respects standard environment variables.

Installation

From crates.io (recommended)

This method automatically downloads, compiles, and installs rjot on your system.

1. Install the Rust toolchain

   If you don't already have it, install Rust from the official site: rustup.rs.

2. Install rjot

   cargo install rjot
   

   This will place the rjot executable in your cargo binary path (usually ~/.cargo/bin/), making it available from anywhere in your terminal.

From source

To build the very latest version directly from the source code:

git clone https://github.com/bgreenwell/rjot.git
cd rjot
cargo install --path .

Usage guide

A note on shells and quotes

Your command-line shell (like Bash or Zsh) can interpret special characters like ! even inside double quotes ("). This can cause commands to fail or hang.

The best practice is to always use single quotes (') for your messages. This tells the shell to treat every character literally.

# GOOD: This works perfectly
❯ rjot 'This is a great idea!'

# BAD: This will probably fail!
❯ rjot "This is a great idea!"

Creating notes

1. Jot down a quick note (the default action):

❯ rjot 'This is a quick thought I want to save.'

2. Create a tagged, one-liner note: The --tags (or -t) flag accepts space-separated or comma-separated values.

❯ rjot 'A great idea for the project' --tags project rust
# or
❯ rjot 'Another idea' -t project,rust

3. Create a longer note in your editor:

# This opens your default $EDITOR
❯ rjot new

# Use a custom template for structured notes
❯ rjot new --template meeting.md

Viewing and filtering notes

1. List the 10 most recent notes:

❯ rjot list

2. Full-text search of all notes:

❯ rjot find 'productivity'

3. Filter by one or more tags:

# Find notes with the 'project' tag
❯ rjot tags project

# Find notes with BOTH 'rust' and 'cli' tags
❯ rjot tags rust,cli

4. View notes from a specific time:

❯ rjot today
❯ rjot yesterday
❯ rjot week

# View notes from a specific date or range
❯ rjot on 2025-05-20
❯ rjot on 2025-05-01..2025-05-31

5. Compile notes into a summary: Add the --compile flag to any time-based view to get a single Markdown summary.

❯ rjot week --compile > weekly-summary.md

Managing specific notes

The show, edit, and delete commands allow you to target a specific note in two ways: by its ID prefix or by its recency.

1. Show the full content of a note:

# By ID prefix
❯ rjot show 2025-06-08-1345

# By recency (the most recent note)
❯ rjot show --last
# or
❯ rjot show --last=1

2. Edit a note:

# Edit the 3rd most recent note
❯ rjot edit --last=3

3. Delete a note: This command will ask for confirmation unless you use the --force flag.

# Delete a note by ID prefix, with a confirmation prompt
❯ rjot delete 2025-06-08-1345

# Delete the last note without a prompt
❯ rjot delete --last --force

Utility commands

1. Get info about your setup:

# Show storage paths
❯ rjot info --paths

# Show note and tag statistics
❯ rjot info --stats

Configuration

File storage location

rjot respects platform conventions. By default, notes are stored in the entries sub-folder of:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/rjot/
• Linux: ~/.config/rjot/
• Windows: C:\Users\<YourUsername>\AppData\Roaming\rjot\

You can always override this by setting the $RJOT_DIR environment variable.

Templates

Create custom templates in the templates subdirectory of your rjot root folder (e.g., ~/.config/rjot/templates/). rjot supports one variable: {{date}}, which will be replaced with the current timestamp.

Roadmap

rjot is under active development. The next major step is to implement the "power features":

• Git integration: rjot init --git to turn your journal into a version-controlled repository, and rjot sync to automate commits and sync with a remote.
• Encryption: rjot init --encrypt to enable transparent, on-disk file encryption using age for ultimate privacy.
• Reminders: rjot remind to set system-level notifications (e.g., rjot remind me in 1 hour to...).

Contributing

This project is open source and contributions are welcome! Please feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.