Gthnk
Gthnk is a personal knowledge management system. Capture your ideas using plain old text files. Make a journal that lasts 100 years.
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.
User Interface
To interact with the Gthnk journal, connect to http://localhost:1620 and log in with the username gthnk and the password gthnk.
Click the fast-forward icon to view the live journal buffer.
As you edit journal.txt, this live buffer will be updated.
Once the journals have been rotated, the history of previous days becomes available within the Gthnk Interface.
Journal Rotation
When the journal rotates, all the entries are imported from journal.txt into the database.
After import, the journal.txt file is wiped.
The preferred rotation method method is to use an automatic process like cron, systemd, or launchd.
A full server with rotation using docker-compose is available in the readme.
The journal can be manually rotated using the interface by clicking the refresh button in the hamburger menu.
Before journal.txt is wiped, its contents are backed up to ~/.gthnk/backups - so information is never lost even if there is a problem with rotation.
Integration with Text Editors
Text editor integrations make it easier to insert journal entries.
- VS Code: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=IanDennisMiller.gthnk
- Sublime Text: https://github.com/iandennismiller/gthnk/tree/master/src/sublime-text-plugin
After installing the plugin for your editor, the following key combinations are available:
- Ctrl-Alt-Cmd-N: Insert date marker YYYYMMDD
- Ctrl-Alt-Cmd-M: Insert time marker HHMM
Tags
Tagging is available with double-square brackets:
2020-07-04 0804 To insert a [[tag]] in [[gthnk]], put one or more words inside square brackets.
A tag links to all other entries containing the tag or fulltext keyword.
Configuration
The default configuration file is ~/.gthnk/gthnk.conf.
This file can be edited to change the location of input journal files, database, logging, and other system parameters.
In particular, you can change INPUT_FILES to pull from multiple journal text sources including shared files on other devices.
Cloud Sync
You can sync Gthnk to multiple devices using a cloud file system like Dropbox or Seafile.
Use the docker run -v flag to point to your cloud storage: -v ${PATH_TO_CLOUD}/gthnk:/home/gthnk/cloud-storage
A complete example using Dropbox could look like:
docker run -d --rm \
--name gthnk-server \
-p 1620:1620 \
-e TZ=America/Toronto \
-v ~/.gthnk:/home/gthnk/.gthnk \
-v ~/Dropbox/gthnk:/home/gthnk/cloud-storage \
iandennismiller/gthnk
This configuration supports running Gthnk on a dedicated server, like a local Linux machine, while editing the journal files on devices that are synced via the cloud.
To support a laptop and phone, edit ~/.gthnk/gthnk.conf to specify multiple INPUT_FILES located on cloud storage.
INPUT_FILES = "/home/gthnk/cloud-storage/journal-laptop.txt,/home/gthnk/cloud-storage/journal-phone.txt"
Full Server with Rotation
In order for Gthnk to rotate the journals automatically, a separate process needs to run periodically.
The full suite of Gthnk server processes can be run as:
wget https://github.com/iandennismiller/gthnk/raw/master/src/docker/docker-compose.yaml docker-compose up -d
Other Gthnk Resources
- Project repository
- Public website
- Python Package Index
- Chat room (matrix)
- https://app.element.io/#/room/#gthnk:matrix.org
- Continuous Integration
- Python-Markdown gthnk journal Extension