An embarrassingly simple note taking CLI tool.

All this does is create and/or open a markdown file in your $EDITOR with a title header already populated. When you save and close the file it will commit it. That's it.

This is just for me, so there's a lot of hard coded values at the moment, eg. the root folder of your notes will always be "$HOME/journal/" and your editor will be neovim.

Create a configuration file at $XDG_HOME/jrnl/config.toml.

The config file is expected to contain a TOML table representing a "profile". The only required key at the moment under each profile is a "root" key, which is the root directory for your journal.

An example file might look like:

[personal]
root = "/home/me/journal"

[work]
root = "/home/me/work-repository/docs"

The active profile is selected by setting the JRNL_PROFILE environment variable. eg. export JRNL_PROFILE=personal

jrnl

This will create a note at {root}/{year}/{month}/{day}.md with the header eg. # Monday 30 June 2025

jrnl date 2025 6 30

This will create a note at {root}/2025/6/30.md with the header # Monday 30 June 2025

jrnl ns pets dogs shepherds swiss

This will create a note at {root}/pets/dogs/shepherds/swiss.md with the header # pets.dogs.shepherds.swiss

A Markdown LSP will help you link between and navigate your notes.

Simple tool to encrypt your repo, there's full instructions here.