A lightweight terminal app for managing markdown notes.
Jottem is the note manager I wished already existed. It is a simple and lightweight command line tool to manage a collection of markdown files. It focuses on minimizing the friction between the moment you decide you want to write and actually having the file open in your editor.
Jottem keeps your files in a folder known as the $JOTTEM_ROOT (see the Configuration section below). It also keeps an index (using RocksDB) of your notes for fast access (retrieving an absolute path rather than walking directories). Jottem uses your $EDITOR variable to open notes.
Please note that as of the time of this writing, you are looking at a very early version of jottem. There are still features to come and some existing ones may not be fully fleshed out at this point. I will do my best to keep this readme up to date as development progresses.
Clone this repository and install with Cargo like so:
git clone https://github.com/dogue/jottem
cd jottem
cargo install --path .
Jottem's CLI is fairly simple and I've tried to make the help docs you know...helpful. Regardless, let's go over the main functionality.
An important idiom to know is that Jottem allows you to specify a relative path (relative to $JOTTEM_ROOT) anywhere that it accepts a note title. This allows you to organize your notes into subdirectories (or not) as you see fit. If you specify a relative path that doesn't exist, Jottem will create it for you.
For example, if you create a new note and specify the title as foo/bar/baz, Jottem will create the folders foo and bar and create a file called baz.md inside of bar inside of foo.
When attempting to edit a note, you can give the relative path or just the title. If the title doesn't match any known notes, Jottem will ask if you want to create a new one with that title/path. If the title matches exactly one note, that note will be opened in your editor. If the title matches multiple known notes, Jottem will provide you with a list to select one.
You can create a new note using the create (alias c) command like so:
jottem c my_note
Jottem does not care what characters you use in your note titles/paths except that it will trim leading and trailing slashes. Otherwise, Linux filesystem rules are the only rules.
You can edit an existing note using the edit (alias e) command like so:
jottem e my_note
This will open the note in your editor if it exists.
See Usage above for details on how the edit command handles non-existent notes.
You can search for notes using the find (alias f) command like so:
Search by note title/path
jottem f -p note_title
Search by tags
jottem f -t a_tag,another_tag
Find all notes
jottem f -a
Jottem's tag search is currently very greedy, meaning it will return all notes that match any of the provided tags.
You can delete a note using the delete (alias d) command like so:
jottem d my_note
This command follows the same behavior as the edit command in regards to titles that match multiple notes.
In addition to adding tags when creating a new note, you can manage tags on existing notes using the tag (alias t) command like so:
Add tag(s)
jottem t add some_note list,of,tags
Remove tag(s)
jottem t remove some_note list,of,tags
Jottem currently displays a rebuild command. The rebuild command is not yet implemented but will be used later for rebuilding the index should you decide to move your root folder or otherwise need to resync the index with the note files on disk.
Jottem's configuration is very simple and consists of two environment variables:
$JOTTEM_ROOT specifies the root folder under which all of your note files will live. This defaults to $HOME/.local/share/jottem if not set.
$JOTTEM_DB_PATH specifies where the index database should be stored on disk. This defaults to $HOME/.cache/jottem if not set.
This project was started to satisfy my own desire for a lightweight notes manager with the features I wanted. That said, if you're interested in the project, please do consider contributing if you'd like. I welcome your ideas on how to improve the project.