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.

• 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

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

Requires Go 1.24+

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

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"

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/

See all your notes in the current notebook.

jot notes list

Fieldless search is title-only (jot notes search "..." normalizes to title:...). Use explicit body: when you want body/content matching.

jot notes search "important"
jot notes search "body:important"

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

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

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.

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.