A tiny, human-first command-line journal tool inspired by jrnl.sh, written in rust.

Mission

lgg makes it effortless to log your day in plain Markdown from the CLI while keeping your files yours: readable, portable, and editable without our app.

There is no hidden metadata and no lock-in. If you never run lgg again, your notes remain simple .md files that any editor can open. lgg is a convenience layer that timestamps, files, and filters entries; the Markdown is the product.

Core Principles

• Simplicity over features. Prefer conventions to configuration.
• Markdown only. No custom markup, no binary formats.
• Zero hidden state. Everything important is visible in the file.
• Manual edits are first-class. Users can create or edit entries on any device and lgg should still understand them.

Installation

(Instructions to be added once packaging is set up.)

Usage

Creating Entries

lgg is designed for quick, natural language logging. Text you provide is saved as a new entry. The first sentence ending with a period (.) or the first line is treated as the title, and the rest becomes the body.

Basic Usage

# Write a quick entry for today. "A new entry" is the title.
lgg A new entry. The rest is the body.

# Open your default editor ($VISUAL/$EDITOR) to write a longer entry
lgg

Using Dates and Times

You can specify a date and time for your entry in a flexible, human-readable format. If you only provide a date, the time will be set to the default_time in your configuration (21:00 or 9 PM by default).

The prefix before the colon (:) is parsed for date and time information.

# Simple date keywords
lgg yesterday: Finally fixed that annoying bug.
lgg tomorrow: I will prepare for the big presentation.

# Combine dates and times
lgg tomorrow at noon: Team lunch. I hope there is pizza.
lgg today at 6pm: Dinner with family.
lgg friday at 19:30: Movie night.

# Use days of the week (resolves to the most recent past date)
lgg monday: Planned the week\'s tasks.

# Use specific dates
lgg 2025-12-25: Christmas day.
lgg 2025-12-25 at 8am: Opened presents.

Available Keywords

You can use the following keywords (and user-defined synonyms) to specify dates and times. Keywords are case-insensitive.

Relative Dates

• today
• yesterday
• tomorrow
• last week
• last month
• last year

Days of the Week

• monday
• tuesday
• wednesday
• thursday
• friday
• saturday
• sunday

Times of Day

• morning (06:00)
• noon (12:00)
• evening (18:00)
• night (21:00)
• midnight (00:00)

Time Separator

• at (used to separate date and time parts, e.g., yesterday at 5pm)

Reading Entries

• Use the --on flag to view all entries for a given date.
• Use the --from flag to view all entries from the give day til today.
• Use the --to flag in combination with --from to view all entries in a range.
• Use the --at flag to view all entries for (or from) an specific time. You can supply an exact hour (13:00) or a Time of Day keyword (morning). Following the example, the first one (13:00), will give you all entries written from 13:00 til 14:00. The second one (morning) from 06:00 til 11:59.
• Use the --tags flag to search for one or more tags within all your entries.
• Use the --all-tags flag to list all the tags within your entries.
• Use --style [long][short] to display your entries with/without body. Default is long. It can also be set with an env variable LGG_STYLE, so you can change the default.
• Use --count flag in a to only see the number of results.

# See all entries from yesterday
lgg --on yesterday

# See all entries from last week (notice the '')
lgg --on 'last week'

# See all entries from a specific date
lgg --on 2025-08-15

# You can use the days of the week too,
# it will fallback to the closest day in the past
lgg --on monday

# Searching for entries from this week with specific tag
lgg --from 'this week' --tags @work

# You can provide a time keyword to filter more
lgg --from 'last week' --at morning

## Or to get ALL your entries written in an specific time of the day
lgg --at '11:00'

Editing Entries

• Use the --edit flag to edit entries for a given date. Only works on single date searches (today, monday, 12/12/2025...).

Configuration

lgg can be configured via a config.toml file. It looks for this file in the standard user config directory for your OS:

• Linux: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/lgg/config.toml or ~/.config/lgg/config.toml
• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/lgg/config.toml or ~/.config/lgg/config.toml
• Windows: %APPDATA%\lgg\config.toml

[!NOTE] You can use the configuration to extend the behavior of lgg, and even translate it to your language. For that, use the synonyms configuration and look at the keywords that can be extended.

Here are all the available options with their defaults:

# The absolute path to the directory where your journal files are stored.
# If not set, a default directory is chosen based on your OS.
# You can see the active path by running `lgg --path`.
journal_dir = "/path/to/your/journal"

# The absolute path to the directory where your todo files are stored.
# If not set, a default directory is chosen based on your OS.
# You can see the active path by running `todo --path`.
todo_list_dir = "/path/to/your/todos"

# The command to use for the editor when running `lgg` with no text.
# If not set, it falls back to $VISUAL, then $EDITOR, then "vim".
editor = "hx"

# The time to use for an entry when only a date is provided (eg "yesterday").
# Format is "HH:MM".
default_time = "21:00"

# The format string used for the date in the header of daily files.
# Uses chrono's strftime format specifiers.
# See: https://docs.rs/chrono/latest/chrono/format/strftime/
journal_date_format = "%A, %d %b %Y" # e.g., "Friday, 15 Aug 2025"

# The format for date time in due_date & done_date of todos.
# If you don't want the time to appear, change it to "%d/%m/%Y"
todo_datetime_format = "%d/%m/%Y %H:%M"

# The different formats you want to use for the date
# when searching for entries.
# Uses chrono's strftime format specifiers.
# See: https://docs.rs/chrono/latest/chrono/format/strftime/
input_date_formats = ["%d/%m/%Y", "%d%m%Y"]

# A table of custom synonyms for date keywords.
# The key is your alias, and the value must be a built-in keyword
# (today, yesterday, tomorrow, noon, midnight...).
[synonyms]
ytd = "yesterday"
tmrw = "tomorrow"

# You can even use it to add translations
# Spanish
ayer = "yesterday"
"a las" = "at"

# German
gestern = "yesterday"

# Italian
ieri = "yesterday"

# Japanese
kino = "yesterday"

# now you can do: kino a las 3: I had coffe yesterday at 3.

Tips and tricks

You can find some here.

Roadmap

The project is currently in the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) phase. To see what's done, what's in progress, and what's planned for the future, please see our official ROADMAP.md.

FAQ

• Why the name lgg?

• While most people like journaling, I like to do logging. While at work, when I finish a task I take a timestamp of it. The name lgg is the closest consonant abbreviation that also plays nice when writing it in the keyboard for quick access.

• Why use this if jrnl exits?

• That's a very good question. jrnl has been a fantastic tool and allowed me to ditch my physical notebook. I recommend you to use it instead of lgg. I created this tool because I want full markdown support. I want to write entries from my phone, knowing that I will be able to access them with lgg later on (and hopefully in the future, with the --fix command, auto-format them). If that's not important to you and you want a battle tested tool, go for jrnl.

• How do you use it in your day to day?

• I like to make entries directly from my Helix Editor, this way I never lose context of what I'm doing. I simply type :! lgg Whatever it's I'm doing or I've finished. and the entry is created. I also like doing quick searches for today's entries from the editor, in case I left a note to myself earlier in the day or the day before (remember, lgg has the keyword tomorrow, so you can do tomorrow at noon: something to do.). Searching tags in meetings: it's very handy to quickly summon your notes about a topic (if you were kind to yourself in the past and properly tagged the topics).

• How do you use it with your phone?

• I have this shortcut to create formatted entries in my shared folder. To read and edit, I use a fantastic app called Fountain.

Contributing

(Contribution guidelines to be added.)

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. Be nice.