gthnk

gthnk is a personal knowledge management system. Capture your ideas using plain old text files. Make a journal that lasts 100 years.

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Overview

  • gthnk presents a journal consisting of many entries.
  • Entries are created using plain old text files, which gthnk imports once per day.
  • Any text editor can be used to add information to gthnk.
  • Entries are searchable using the embedded gthnk server, which can be accessed with a browser.
  • Plain-text enables backup/restore via hardcopy (e.g. paper) for long-term archival.

The easiest way to run gthnk is with Docker. gthnk also installs on Windows, Linux, and MacOS systems with Python 3.5+. See the Installation document for more details.

Quick Start

Use Docker to run gthnk with all files stored locally in ~/.gthnk.

docker run -d --rm \
    --name gthnk-server \
    -p 1620:1620 \
    -e TZ=America/Toronto \
    -v ~/.gthnk:/home/gthnk/.gthnk \
    iandennismiller/gthnk

The default text file where you will record journal entries is ~/.gthnk/journal.txt.

Open journal.txt with a text editor to add new journal entries.

Open http://localhost:1620 to access the user interface.

Journal Entries

Use the journal by editing journal.txt with a text editor. First, insert a date marker YYYY-MM-DD and a blank line to start a new journal day. Then, insert a time marker HHMM and a blank line to start a journal entry.

2020-07-04

0804

This is a simple journal entry.

0805

And this is a separate entry, a minute later.

Those two delimiters - date and time followed by a blank line - are all there is to the gthnk journal file format. The rest is Markdown.

You can add multiple entries per day - and multiple days in a single journal - by inserting date and time markers as you work.

Documentation

http://docs.gthnk.com