Jot

A simple, fast, and powerful CLI tool for managing your markdown notes. Jot helps you organize, search, and manage your thoughts without leaving the terminal.

Features

• Notebook Storage: Choose where you want notes stored—in your repo, home directory, or anywhere on your filesystem
• Create, list, search, and view notes from the command line
• Associate default metadata based on groups or folders
• Preset queries: Kanban, Daily Notes, Tags, and more
• Full-text search with fuzzy matching and boolean queries
• Semantic search (optional): Find notes by meaning using hybrid keyword + semantic retrieval

Installation

go install github.com/zenobi-us/jot@latest

Requires Go 1.24+

Migrating from OpenNotes

If you used the old opennotes CLI/repo, use this migration guide:

• OpenNotes → Jot Migration Guide

Quick migration checks:

# Preview pending migrations
jot notebook migrate list

# Dry-run migration actions
jot notebook migrate

# Apply migrations
jot notebook migrate --apply

Quick Start

Get started in seconds:

1. Initialize a notebook in your current directory:

   jot init

2. Create your first note:

   jot notes add "My First Idea"

3. List your notes:

   jot notes list

4. Search your notes:

   jot notes search "Idea"

Common Commands

Creating Notes

Create a new note with a title. You can also specify a path if you want to organize notes into folders.

# Create a note in the root
jot notes add "Meeting Notes"

# Create a note in a subfolder
jot notes add "Project Specs" projects/

Listing Notes

See all your notes in the current notebook.

jot notes list

Searching Notes

Find notes instantly by keyword.

jot notes search "important"

Views

Jot supports various preset views to help you organize and visualize your notes.

Output is JSON by default.

# view all available views
jot notes view

# display notes in kanban view
jot notes view kanban

Configuration

Jot works out of the box, but you can customize it.

Global configuration is stored in:

• Linux: ~/.config/jot/config.json
• macOS: ~/Library/Preferences/jot/config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\jot\config.json

Semantic Search (Optional)

Find notes by meaning, not just keywords. Semantic search understands concepts and paraphrases.

# Hybrid search (default): combines keyword + semantic ranking
jot notes search semantic "meeting notes about project timeline"

# Pure semantic mode: meaning-based, ideal for conceptual queries
jot notes search semantic "discussions about deadlines" --mode semantic

# With filters: combine semantic search with boolean conditions
jot notes search semantic "architecture decisions" --and data.tag=design

# Explain mode: see why each result matched
jot notes search semantic "workflow improvements" --explain

When to use semantic vs regular search:

• Regular search: Exact keywords, specific terms, quick lookups
• Semantic search: Conceptual queries, paraphrases, "find notes about X"

For more details, see Semantic Search Guide.

Advanced Usage

Jot provides powerful search capabilities with full-text search, fuzzy matching, boolean query operators, and semantic retrieval for complex filtering.

For advanced features like boolean queries, JSON output for automation, and multi-notebook management, please see our Advanced Documentation.