I like the idea, but not the web-based implementation. Local first, and ideally an open source app that can work offline when I'm going distraction free.
It feels like a vim plugin. It definitely feels like org-mode can do this.
A few years back I had a little command line tool where I could log things quickly - it was like syslog for humans - but with #hashtags for projects or clients, and then a small tool that would work out how long I'd spent on different things. It required me to write a log every time I finished a task or a pomodoro. I might resurrect that, but having an open file has been cute for me for quite a while, and then I can go back and copy/paste what I need to draft docs and so on.
I do think "note taking" as an app is actually under-served. There's lots of wiki plugins, org-mode, tons of "productivity tools", but actually a single app that lets you just write, then helps you with review (and timestamps, contexts and so on are essential to that), and then figure out actions/todos and gives you seamless interaction with those, and integration with 3rd-party tools (I don't want to copy and paste between vim/emacs/JIRA/asana/notion/trello/apple notes/calendar reminders/outlook tasks/whatever), would be very, very neat.
I have a command line tool that just takes a line of input, then writes the time stamped entry to a text file, one per quarter. A cron job pops up a terminal once an hour during business hours. I use that log to prepare for performance reviews to recall what I’d worked on, and I often go back to remember details about a problem I solved months or years ago. It’s fantastic, been using it for seven years.
In 2023, I wrote another script that appends a line to a csv file every 5 minutes. The line includes the focused window class, command line, title, name of the git branch that’s currently checked out, system idle time, and WiFi access point name. So I know pretty much how long I was working on everything vs other stuff like slack.
I’m finally starting to write tools to visualize and analyze this data. Is it going to change how I work? Not really, but for some reason I like seeing at a glance how I spent my time.
Being a developer, I'm aware that the desktop ecosystem offers a plethora of tools for this.
I think my main inspiration in this project was to combine the simplicity of apple notes with timestamped entries, being able to log notes in this form from any kind of device and having cross-device sync.
I released the local-only version so it will be useful to privacy-minded folks
but I do plan to have a cross-device backup and sync option since I believe it's a very compelling feature.
Thanks for the hat-tip on `jrnl` - this is a much better version of the cmd line tool I talked about in my comment above and I am now starting to use it. Great logistics being cli-based, think I'm going to be using it plenty.
Wow! I was thinking the same notes app like a month or two ago, even tried to create it! Can you open-source it? So we can contribute, and make it self hosted?
All code is embarrassing, and there will always be someone that comes along to ask "wow, why did you write THIS in this way? I wouldn't have done it that way!"
This is lovely. I maintain a dev log at work where I manually time-stamp entries section wise, but many times I’m doing it after the fact. Ability to edit the time stamps and then search based on it would make this super powered.
Actually, I would love to combine this with Heynote[0], have you considered it?
Why not just use Notepad in Windows and hit F5 Time/Date at need?
9:54 AM 3/21/2025
That said, this sort of thing has me wishing for something like to Services support in Windows where that could be implemented as a Service by Notepad and then used in any context where text input is acceptable.
Please take this as your official notice that you use dates completely wrong and the world thinks you are a terrible person. If you would like to be a good person, please correct your horrific use of dates immediately
Medium/Small/Big Big:Medium:Small - No! Bad American!
Big-Medium-Small Big:Medium:Small—Yes! You're now ISO 8601 compliant!
ISO 8601 is a great standard when you need interoperability (e.g. between machines/servers, or between humans in different locales) or the ability to sort by timestamp.
For personal note taking, or notes to be shared locally, it makes sense to use your local locale's format.
I couldn't find any simple apple-notes-like app, that is available on all platforms, and allows logging in this style.
my private version of this app has cross-device sync, it's just not fully baked yet since I need to implement some form of signup (google/apple), and there's also the privacy issue people are concerned about which I'm not sure how to address.
If you could make a way to share a note attached to a specific name, it would work very nicely for one usage which needs timestamping I've been working on (which is why I had the F5 thing at the ready), tracking how long it takes to cut a given file on a CNC, then sharing that result.
I'll start using it for sharing times of Carbide Motion files.
EDIT: One last feature request --- add an option/UI where a beginning time allotment could be entered (say 60 minutes for a 1 hr. meeting) and the time would be counted down for each entry? and then then time over shown once the allotment was used up? This would seem to match the typical usage of managing notes for a meeting.
For bonus points, add in a way to add hourly rates so that the on-going cost of the meeting will show up? (though maybe that's too cluttered).
The additional metadata like tags, and the overall streamlining of the workflow. Yes, most things can be taped together with a little effort, but if this is something that vibes very well with you, then this is a substantial incremental improvement.
Would I ever be able to see the source, or run whatever backend the above request requires myself? Maybe I've answered my first question and this thing is 100% client side.
I've been using https://www.usememos.com/ as of late, so the concept resonates with me. It's the first note taking app I've went all in on that seems to make time a first-class feature. Yours takes that even further by breaking it down per entry.
this is the local-only version, everything is stored in a db in your browser.
the backend just serves the app and creates anonymous users. my private version of the app has cross-device sync,
it's just not ready yet for the public, because it relies on google/apple signup and storing the notes on a server, and I know it deters some privacy-minded folks.
If you use org-mode, you can just set up a git repo which auto-commits with gitwatch. And run magit-blame when you want the timestamps. With the advantage that it doesn't distract you when you don't need to see them, but super useful when you want to check when a note is written.
Yeah, I do something similar with org-node (org-roam alternative) where every capture templates has an inactive timestamp at the end before the tags.
i.e. Idea: Build minesweeper in the terminal with Ratatui @ [2025-02-05 Wed 18:01] :@someday:
And then I capture it in a daily note (or very rarely refile it) that has an org-id. Then everything gets connected with links and backlinks.
I keep the usual CREATED in the properties drawer empty in case I want to turn that heading into a node for linking at some point.
Though I'm still figuring out some things about my approach as I go. One thing is clear, org-mode can be adapted to quite a lot of workflows regardless of their weirdness or efficacy.
Git gives you a full history of changes which is convenient for many other reasons. I also do sometimes put dated and less often timestamped entries when desired.
Of course, all the chat apps that allow sending messages to yourself come with free time stamps.
I use this feature on Slack at the least.
In a google workspace you used to be able to create a conversation or whatever they call it, not invite anyone and bam! notes to self. But I think they disabled it now and they don't let you create a new chat if it doesn't have at least 2 people. Might be able to work around it by inviting someone and then kicking them out, I haven't tried.
Whoa cool! I built a bespoke tool eerily similar to this several years ago as an intern at Johnson Space Center for logging mission communications. I’ve wished I had something like it for meeting notes every time since then. I’ll be giving it a try ;)
I've started building a similar app before, except with more of a focus on the timestamps than the text (prioritizing time tracking over note taking). I ended up switching gears to different side projects and never came back to this one.
That being said, a feature I'd begun to implement that you could consider adding is what I called Context Tags. It looks like in Notetime tags are applied to notes to provide better organization. Context tags in contrast would be applied to timestamped lines within the note. When moving to the next line, the new one would default to having the same context tags.
That's it! That's the whole feature. This let's a user tag the first line in a category, such as "work" or "project A", then gain that categorization for any subsequent lines (until the user specified a new category).
that's an interesting approach
this implies that the context can change from one subject to the other within a single note? is that a useful use-case to you?
Those are basically string-replacements. Add those lines to .vim/vimrc, and when you type "dtt" or "dts" that text gets replaced with a time/date stamp.
Kinda useful if you want to manually add date/time to lines, but a different thing.
Might be mild autism or some other mental condition, but I'm obsessive about timestamping everything. In my defense, it is useful when you want to refer back to it! Looks like a great little app
Timestamps are very underrated. There's so much useful information stored in them. It can help you remember what other things you did that day around that time, in what order some events happened, what were your initial plans and how they changed. These things can be so easily forgotten.
I've dedicated Sublime Text specifically for my development notes. I use a single folder in my home directory for all these notes. Every new tab gets a timestamped name and this directory assigned (Yes, my sublime's default behaviour is now this), so if I save it, it goes there.
I also have a shortcut to save all files at once, which is great because I end up with a lot open by the end of the day.
It helps keeping track of info I might need later, like backups, text transformations, optimizing DB queries, curl calls, less important passwords, refining emails with LLMs, drafting prompts, etc.
I love how fast my workflow is now: just switch to sublime, open a new tab, type away, and hit `CMD + Y` to save all at the end of the day or week.
For lookup: Mostly, I remember a few keywords and search across files. They're timestamped, so they're sorted in the sidebar (e.g., `2025-03-20_11-02-15-77dee966.txt`).
I'm just getting a blank page on Firefox and a few of these errors in the inspector output:
Uncaught SecurityError: Security error when calling GetDirectory
It does work on Chromium. And it looks nice. I wish it had keyboard navigation though, which it doesn't seem to have yet, so I can quickly correct a previous entry.
This idea feels a little like bullet journaling or logseq [0] to me. For what it's worth, I do this in Obsidian and clean-up my thoughts on a regular basis. It hits the right balance of minimalism and usefulness for me.
I am a heavy user of Roam ( before that workflowy, before that org mode). I have daily checklists, but also some extensive notes on specific topics and some large projects I'm tracking.
But I'm so heavily using LLMs now to help with researching topics. And I haven't found a good way to bring my LLM usage to my note taking.
I'd love to be able to go over some things with an LLM and then tell it to add a summary of this to document X on topic Y.
Does anyone have a workflow that combines LLMs and Deep Research with a note-taking system? I'm wondering about just using Obsidian with Windsurf to make changes to it in an agent type manner.
Two QOL uses I've found is concept indexing and excerpt formatting.
Before/after engaging with new material, I'd generate a table of concepts and the pages these concepts are mentioned. Simple two column markdown table, nothing more.
Second, for excerpt formatting I use a specific markdown format (add timestamp header, page number, and one/two keywords) to convert my highlights after running through a PDF.
A more advanced use case is extracting the bibliography and building an inverted index of where each citation
is mentioned (page numbers/paragraphs). You can then compute all sorts of concordances: which authors are referenced on the same page, what concepts are related, which authors/concepts are over/underrepresented, and so on.
I would love an option to easily export these, both in bulk and as individual notes. That way I can share them, feed them into software (i.e. AI to summarise) etc.
Maybe it's somewhere in the docs, but I can't find it easily in the mobile app
Looks awesome! Was thinking about building it for myself. One note: the delete function is not working apparently: it shows a note is deleted, but it appears again after reload.
Needs the "Show HN:" tag since the submitter is the creator.
Also the submitter is here to answer questions, but their message is buried.
- - -
I wonder if it would be better to have a pinned message for Show HN threads. E.g. there could be a /submitshow page, which explains the Show HN process and best practices, and allows the submitter to create an explanation/AMA pinned post at submission time.
thanks for that! new to this platform and when I created the post, it asked for a url and text which I thought will be shown together (like reddit), and now I can't find my own comment :)
I'm using a simple little combo of a shell script and alias to append a line of text to a text file in a known location. The script is just to prepend the line with a timestamp. Stupid and simple, but hey, it works for me.
My aliases:
alias ttag='/cygdrive/c/Dropbox/tools/ttag/ttag.sh'
alias ttagcat='\cat /cygdrive/c/Dropbox/tools/ttag/ttag-logfile.txt'
alias ttago='open /cygdrive/c/Dropbox/tools/ttag/ttag-logfile.txt'
I have almost the same workflow with https://getdrafts.com/ where I only take short notes and I have custom action which sets the creation date+time of the note as its first line. But, having a separate entry for each line is the next level of this approach.
I like it and have been using 2 days. I don't understand one thing: Does the thread number increase or is it only one thread. I mean the notes are going down forever even if the day changes. Congrats btw
Nit: clicking "Create X" to add a new tag seems worse than pressing enter to create one as you have to go off the tag menu and back onto it to create or add another, but it's not necessarily clear that you can press enter to create one.
Lots of people are posting their custom solutions using org-mode, cli tools, vim, etc. There’s a wide world of people out there who don’t customize their environments, and therefore miss out on great improvements to their lives. Let’s make tools for them!
This is pretty neat! Is font formatting allowed/possible in shortcuts? Would love the timestamp to be on a mono font! Tried fiddling with it, but haven't been able to figured it out.
This is probably intentional -- if you want to fix a typo or make something clearer that you've already captured you likely want to preserve the original timestamp?
If you want an entry timestamped to your current time, you can make a new entry.
this is the answer :)
fixing errors should not alter the timeline
I assumed that editing timestamps is also quite problematic since it will break the chronological order of the note
I really don't get how this can't be emulated with the F5 key, or something like Sublime Text's InsertDate package, or a text expansion software. What does this note taking provide that's any different?
the approach here was to combine the simplicity of apple notes, working across devices, with the automatic time-stamping found in the desktop ecosystem of tools.
Obsidian/SublimeText users are probably not the target audience for this :)
Obsidian already has this, super-D for date, super-T for time, trivial to add inline as you go, if using a single-note approach. And any new note automatically captures its time of creation and last-edited time.
I see a lot of people mentioning how easy it is to add a timestamp using a shortcut or git blame, but that overhead could kills note-taking. Both writing and lookup/review should be extremely fast.
This is really sleek. I like the focus on minimalism since what I often need is a simple interface to take down quick notes, thoughts, and ideas. Any plans to offer a self-hosted version?
This is a delightful app. Thank you for sharing! I like the user experience. I don't need to do anything except for write and press enter when I want to create a new line of text.
As someone who works as an indie contractor and bills hourly, I have been wanting something like this for an eternity. Looks pretty cool and will take it for a spin.
that is exactly the tool I want. i just want to cache-out my brain 24x7 so that I can replay it later on and figure out what I was actually doing all day.
The timestamp on each line gets recorded when return is entered. Is there a way to record the timestamp on when the line started instead? Maybe make it configurable?
I agree; being able to export is super important for keeping records, and it's definitely my top request. Having a local app instead of a web app would be great too.
its a 100% client-side react app, there are no server requests except from the first one creating the anonymous user. the local DB is SQLite implementation that supports offline mode and cloud sync (not enabled in this version)
It feels like a vim plugin. It definitely feels like org-mode can do this.
A few years back I had a little command line tool where I could log things quickly - it was like syslog for humans - but with #hashtags for projects or clients, and then a small tool that would work out how long I'd spent on different things. It required me to write a log every time I finished a task or a pomodoro. I might resurrect that, but having an open file has been cute for me for quite a while, and then I can go back and copy/paste what I need to draft docs and so on.
I do think "note taking" as an app is actually under-served. There's lots of wiki plugins, org-mode, tons of "productivity tools", but actually a single app that lets you just write, then helps you with review (and timestamps, contexts and so on are essential to that), and then figure out actions/todos and gives you seamless interaction with those, and integration with 3rd-party tools (I don't want to copy and paste between vim/emacs/JIRA/asana/notion/trello/apple notes/calendar reminders/outlook tasks/whatever), would be very, very neat.