jot is a command-line daily journal for people who want to write a little every day without opening yet another app. You type jot, your editor opens today's entry, you write what you want, you save and close. That's it.

Behind the scenes, every entry is a plain markdown file in ~/.jot/YYYY/MM/. You can back it up with cp, sync it with Dropbox or Syncthing, version it with git, search it with grep, or just leave it. Nothing about jot ties you to jot.

Commands

jot                       # opens today's entry in $EDITOR
jot yesterday             # opens yesterday's entry
jot 2026-05-22            # opens a specific day
jot list                  # recent entries
jot search "the project"  # find entries mentioning anything
jot today                 # pipe today's text to stdout
jot stats                 # writing streak + word counts

Why we made it

Notion is too much. Day One is too much. A text file in a folder is exactly the right amount. jot is the smallest thing that makes writing daily friction-free.