jot

A minimal and interoperable CLI Note-Taking tool

jot is a minimalist, Unix-style note-taking tool for the command line. It captures your thoughts fast, stores them in plain text, and plays well with everything else in your terminal toolbox.

Design Goals

• Work with stdin/stdout
• Store notes as plaintext files
• Be composable with grep, awk, jq, fzf, etc.
• Require as little user configuration as possible
• Clear organisation and context management

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Features

• Capture instantly from stdin or your editor
• Composable with Unix pipelines and scripting tools
• Searchable with grep, jq, rg, etc.
• Plaintext storage - portable and transparent
• Minimal interface, single config file, bring your own editor
• Context-aware note organization
• Time-based filtering and sorting
• Tag-based filtering and sorting
• Template-driven note creation
• Markdown note formatting

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Install

Go install

go install github.com/dalryan/jot@v0.1.0

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/dalryan/jot
cd jot
go build

# Optional: make `jot` available globally
alias jot=./jot

Usage

dalryan@fedora ~/w/g/jot (main)> jot --help
Jot lets you quickly create, view, and organize plain-text notes from the command line.

Usage:
  jot [command]

Available Commands:
  completion  Generate the autocompletion script for the specified shell
  context     Manage the active context
  edit        Edit a note by ID
  help        Help about any command
  list        List existing notes
  new         Create a new note in your editor
  notes-path  Print the path to the notes directory
  pipe        Parse note file paths from stdin and display summaries
  quick       Capture a quick, timestamped note
  templates   Manage note templates
  timeline    Show notes in reverse chronological order
  today       Open or create today's daily note
  view        View a note by its ID

Flags:
  -h, --help   help for jot

Use "jot [command] --help" for more information about a command.

Example workflows

The following examples show basic note-taking workflows using jot.

Example workflow:

# Quick note creation with tagging
jot quick "Idea for CLI tool" --tag jot,idea

# Context-based workflow management
jot context set work
jot quick "Production issue documentation" --tag k8s,bugs
jot context clear

# View all notes
jot list
# Edit a note by ID
jot edit <id>

# Time-based note filtering
jot timeline --since 1h
jot timeline --since 7d --tag idea
jot timeline --context work --tag k8s --since 1d

Integration Capabilities

The strength of jot lies in its ability to compose — not replace — your existing toolset.

It operates effectively via standard streams, enabling seamless piping and filtering with other Unix utilities. Below are examples of real-world integration patterns.

Integration with fzf (Command-Line Fuzzy Finder)

Select and view notes interactively:

# Tag-based note selection and viewing
jot list --tag idea | fzf | jot view

# Timeline-based note selection
jot timeline | fzf | jot view

# Interactive note selection for editing
jot list | fzf | jot edit

Integration with ripgrep (rg)

Efficient content searching across notes:

# Content-based note filtering
rg -l "work" $(jot notes-path) | jot pipe

# Regular expression pattern matching
rg -l ".*bugs" $(jot notes-path) | jot pipe

# Combined content and tag filtering
rg -l "cli" $(jot notes-path) | jot pipe --tag idea

Integration with jq (JSON Processor)

jot can output data in JSON format, enabling structured data processing with jq.

# JSON data structure visualization
jot timeline --json | jq .

# Tag-based JSON filtering
jot list --json | jq '.[] | select(.tags[] == "k8s")'

# Date-based filtering with field selection
jot timeline --json | jq '.[] | select(.created_at > "2023-01-01") | {id: .id, content: .content}'

Integration with awk and sed (Text Processing)

Advanced text transformation and formatting:

# Text case transformation
jot list --json | jq -r '.[].Title' | sed 's/\(.*\)/\U\1/'

# Content volume analysis
find $(jot notes-path) -type f | xargs cat | wc -w

Integration with find (File System Navigation)

Filter notes based on file attributes:

# Recent modification filtering
find $(jot notes-path) -type f -mtime -1 | jot pipe

# File size-based filtering
find $(jot notes-path) -type f -size +10k | jot pipe

Integration with bat (Enhanced Output)

Syntax-highlighted and numbered output:

# Syntax highlighting for note content
jot view <id> | bat -l markdown

# Line number display for reference
jot view <id> | bat -l markdown --number

Integration with pandoc (Document Converter)

Convert notes to other formats:

# HTML conversion for web publishing
jot view <id> | pandoc -f markdown -t html > note.html

# PDF document generation
jot view <id> | pandoc -f markdown -o note.pdf

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jot helps you record your thoughts without breaking your flow — and without leaving your terminal.