tb

Tagebuch

Tagebuch (tb) is a simple command-line tool for organizing daily journals ("Tagebuch" is German for "diary") and todo lists, written in Go.

It organizes notes by day in a directory structure (year/month/day), supports multiple journals, and optionally synchronizes across machines via Git.

Installation

go install github.com/djfritz/tb@latest

Quick Start

# Initialize a new journal called "work"
tb work init

# Edit today's entry (opens $EDITOR)
tb work edit today

# Print today's entry
tb work print today

# Add a todo item
tb work todo add "Review pull requests"

# List all todos
tb work todo

Commands

Commands support prefix matching (e.g., tb work e tod expands to tb work edit today). Invalid commands display help at the current level.

tb <journal>
    init                    Initialize a new journal
    edit
        today               Edit today's entry
        yesterday           Edit yesterday's entry
        tomorrow            Edit tomorrow's entry
        <year/month/day>    Edit a specific date (e.g., 2026/1/6)
    print
        today               Print today's entry (also lists attached files)
        yesterday           Print yesterday's entry
        tomorrow            Print tomorrow's entry
        <year/month/day>    Print a specific date
    todo                    List all todo items
        add <text>          Add a todo item
        complete <number>   Complete a todo item by its number
    search <term>           Search entries using grep-style regular expressions
    list                    List all days with entries (for scripting)
    sync                    Manually sync with git remote (pull then push)
    alias                   List all aliases
        add <name> <date>   Create an alias to a date (e.g., alias add "great thoughts" 2026/1/6)
        remove <name>       Remove an alias by name
    files
        add <date> <path>   Copy a file into a day's directory
        list <date>         List files attached to a day
        remove <date> <name> Remove a file from a day
        copy <date> <name> <dest> Copy a file out to a destination path
    calendar                Show this month's calendar (days with entries highlighted in green, files marked with *)
        last                Show last month's calendar
        next                Show next month's calendar
        <year/month>        Show a specific month (e.g., 2026/1)
    serve <host:port>       Start a web server for managing todos (e.g., serve localhost:8080)

Configuration

Base Directory

By default, journals are stored in ~/.tb/. Override with the -b flag:

tb -b /path/to/journals work edit today

Editor

tb uses the $EDITOR environment variable to open entries for editing. Ensure this is set:

export EDITOR=vim  # or emacs, etc.

Multiple Journals

tb supports working with multiple journals, each in a separate directory under the base path:

tb personal init
tb work init
tb ideas init

Each journal maintains its own entries and todo list.

Git Synchronization

Enable Git sync to automatically pull before reading and push after writing entries.

1. Initialize a Git repository in your journal directory:

   cd ~/.tb/work
   git init
   git remote add origin <your-remote-url>
   

2. Enable sync by adding to the journal's config file (.tagebuch):

   git=true
   

When enabled, tb will:

• git pull before reading entries or todos
• git add -A && git commit && git push after writing

Git errors are printed to stderr but don't prevent the operation from completing.

Directory Structure

~/.tb/
└── work/                   # Journal name
    ├── .tagebuch           # Config file (presence marks valid journal)
    ├── todo                # Todo list (one item per line)
    ├── aliases             # Named aliases to dates (name=year/month/day)
    └── 2026/
        └── 1/
            └── 6/
                ├── entry       # Daily entry file
                └── photo.jpg   # Attached files