Jeff

Installation • Usage • Build • Notes

Jeff is a command line note management app, similar to Obsidian.

Installation

Install with cargo:

$ cargo install jeff

Usage

Create a vault using the following command:

$ jf vault newvault ~/vaults 

Here, newvault is the name of the vault, and '~/vault' is the location where it will be created (this location should be an absolute fs path and exist already or jeff will throw an error).

Providing no arguments to vault command will list all vaults.

$ jf vault

Adding the '-l' flag will list all vaults with their locations.

$ jf vault -l

At this moment only newvault will be listed.

Enter into the vault:

$ jf enter newvault

enter command is also used to switch to other vaults.

Create notes and folders

$ jf note newnote

$ jf folder newfolder

note and folder, both work similarly and create the corresponding items in current folder. When a vault is first created, the current folder is set to its root.

Create templates

To avoid having to write the boilerplate for things like weeks notes, jeff provides note templates.

# list all templates
$ jf template

# create and edit a new template "weekly_note"
$ jf template weekly_note

Notes can then be created using a template by supplying --template (-t) along with the name of the template.

# create a new note from the "weekly_note" template
$ jf note reflection --template weekly_note

# or equivalently
$ jf nt reflection -t weekly_note

Create and edit daily note in the current vault

Daily notes are stored as YYYY-MM-DD.md at the top-level the current vault. jf today will edit any existing daily note. If no daily note exists, you will be prompted to create one.

# Create daily note YYYY-MM-DD? (y/n)
$ jf today 

Change folder

$ jf chdir newfolder

chdir command will switch the current folder to the location mentioned.
Relative path to location from current folder has to be provided. Standard fs paths are accepted as valid input, like ../folder1/somefolder/.

$ jf chdir ..

This will switch back to the root of vault.

Print dir tree of current folder

$ jf list

When needed list command will print the dir tree of current folder. All notes will be highlighted in yellow, vaults will be highlighted in red, and folders will appear blue.

This is what the dir tree will look like with this vault's root as the current folder.

newvault        # red 
├── newfolder   # blue 
└── newnote     # yellow 

The highlight colors can be configured using jf config <item-name>-color <color>. Colors can also be set using jf config <item-name>-color, which displays a select containing all available options.

Set vault color to red

jf config vault-color red

Set folder color using selection

jf config folder-color

Fs operations

Command remove works as its name suggests, on all items (vaults, notes, or folders).

$ jf remove note newnote 

Commands rename and move are used similarly but take one additional argument each.

Command rename takes the new name as its third argument.

$ jf rename note newnote somenewnote

Command move takes the new location as its third argument.

For vaults, path rules are same as vault command and for other items, path rules are same as chdir command.

$ jf move note newnote /newfolder/

These commands take the item type (vault, note, or folder) as their first argument.

Command vmove is similar to move, but it moves an item (note or folder) from the current folder of the current vault to the root of a different vault, and takes the name of this vault as an argument in place of location.

$ jf vmove note newnote somevault 

Every keyword used so far (commands and item names) is interchangeable with its two letter alias, e.g. move command can also be written as:

$ jf mv nt newnote /newfolder/

Handle Jeff's config

$ jf config 

Will display the current configuration. Add additional arguments, jf config <config-type> <config-value to set specific values

$ jf config editor vim 

Get Help

Run jf without a command, or with help command or -h flag for main help message.

$ jf

Use help command or -h flag with a command to get corresponding help.

$ jf help vault

$ jf vault -h

Build

Clone the repo and cd into the directory:

$ git clone https://github.com/DevinLeamy/Jeff
$ cd Jeff

Run the following command to install dependencies and build/compile the program.

$ cargo build 

Then run the executable created in 'target/debug/' (or add it to your path).

Or, run the tool directly:

$ cargo run -- *args*

Pass in commands and arguments after '--'.

Test

All tests can be run using

$ cargo test -- --test-threads=1

Notes

Jeff was bootstrapped by jot, but eventually became a full rewrite with new features, a different design, and open-source maintenance in mind. Contributions are welcome!