| name | jrnl |
| description | Capture notes into your daily journal using the jrnl CLI |
Use the jrnl CLI to append entries to your daily journal. The journal is a
Markdown file named Journal YYYY-MM-DD.md stored in ~/Dropbox/Brain/journal/,
~/Brain/journal/, or ~/.journal/ (first found wins).
Commands
jrnl <title> — Read stdin and append a timestamped entry with the given title.
Prefer a temp file or HEREDOC for the body to avoid escaping issues:
cat <<'EOF' | jrnl "Auth refactor"
Finished refactoring the auth module.
Notes with "quotes" and $vars stay literal.
EOF
# or write body to a temp file, then:
jrnl "Auth refactor" < /tmp/jrnl-body.md
jrnl -c <title> — Same as above, but reads the body from the clipboard
instead of stdin.
jrnl -e — Open today's journal file in $EDITOR (defaults to nvim). The
file is created with a template if it doesn't exist.
jrnl -p — Print the path to today's journal file and exit.
Formatting
Entries are appended under an h3 heading (### HH:MM <title>). Format the body
in Markdown. Because each entry starts at h3, use h4 (####) or deeper for any
headings within the body.
When to use
- User asks to save, note, capture, record, log, or journal something
- User wants to open or edit the journal
- User wants to know where the journal file is