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Show HN: Daily-notes.nvim – fuzzy time journal and planning plugin

github.com

63 pointsfdavies9321 comments

I wrote an nvim plugin that does fuzzy time parsing on plain english dates to help you create + organise periodic notes. I use it daily at work and home. Hope it's helpful to others. :)

note: not using NLP, LLMs or 'true' fuzzy parsing as per academic literature; just normal recursive descent parsing

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I've been using simply `nvim "$(date "+%Y/%b/%d").md"` for about 5 years now. Every time I see a note-taking project or an article about it, like the Zettelkasten method for example, I'm comparing to my one-liner.

I think it'd be useful to have a gif in https://github.com/fdavies93/daily-notes.nvim like https://github.com/jakobkhansen/journal.nvim does. But even then I must say, I still can't intuitively see the benefits of installing a whole plugin. I'm not doubting there are benefits, it's just that I'm reluctant to invest the days and weeks installing and using these plugins to know how they work.

My comparison is always with good ol' Vim Wiki[1], which still works great with NeoVim. I'd add that to the list for comparison too.

1. https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki

This is what I've used for years. I guess my use case is probably different than what OP posted as I don't understand what I might gain from his plugin.

I've been using the markdown lsp called marksman lately (https://github.com/artempyanykh/marksman). It works great for me.

I like to research, and found Zettelkasten to be a great way to do so. The benefit is that you build up a database of very well-reasoned notes that you can link together in different context and build even higher levels of well-reasoned arguments. I used to do it in a simpler way with just grep and plain old unix files, but the ability to quickly find, create and reference notes with something like marksman makes it easier to stay in the flow and be more productive. Even though I could technically do it before, something just clicked with this new approach.

I think it's good to try out different tools and workflows and see what work for you, as it helps you better grasp what your needs are. So even if you don't use the tools they don't have to be a waste of time.

I’m in the process of ditching vscode and for now settled on nvim as the replacement. Currently, I still use Dendron for taking notes. There are some suggestions for companion plugins at the end of the readme - does anyone have additional suggestions? For example for tagging, linking between notes and visualizing the graph?

The PKM space for neovim plugins is a surprisingly deep rabbithole but it can take quite a while to find what you need.

For completions and tagging https://github.com/Feel-ix-343/markdown-oxide works well for me and does pretty much everything I need.

There are also a glut of all-in-one solutions like https://github.com/nvim-neorg/neorg (org-mode for neovim) and https://github.com/epwalsh/obsidian.nvim.

Graphing is a bit harder because it doesn't intuitively match up with nvim's interface, but I'm pretty sure I saw something on Reddit the other day.

I just write my journal straight to an llm. It gives me positive feedback and I can ask about my plans. Works great.

I can't tell if you're serious or joking. If it's the former, could you elaborate on how that works? E.g. are you using a public LLM, or a self-hosted model?

i just use a text editor plugin and use the auto-logging/search features. everything i ask any model in any workspace is searchable

cant grep a react app

I should look into this because I have over 132000 words of text in my notes (more than the average novel) and I'm curious whether I can 'talk' to my second brain via a LLM.

You could first ask a LLM to compress your notes. There was some informal research into this a while back, LLMs have the ability to translate text into a much shorter representation that only they can understand. That might allow you to get around the context size limits.

More practically (or additionally) you could just ask it to summarize them or extract the most relevant parts.

Alternatively, I think the most popular approach is to use a RAG thing though someone else will have to fill you in on the current state of the art.

Smart Connections[0] plug-in for Obsidian is worth checking out.

It does a really good job of indexing (with local or OpenAI embeddings) and RAG allowing you to chat with various models about your notes. The chunking and context algorithms it uses seem to be well designed and find most/all relevant details for most things I try to discuss.

It's well implemented and provides useful and interesting discussions with my journal/notes.

0 - https://github.com/brianpetro/obsidian-smart-connections

Surely you can grep the data model that react uses to populate the app though - whether database or otherwise?

I use a public LLM via its API. My workflow involves a main conversation history containing my initial notes. When I need to explore a specific topic further, I create a branch from that main conversation, keeping the original notes separate.

I love working with neovim and i do all my programming with it for more than 20 years. I often struggle to "move my life" to neovim. For example, task management apps are both on my phone, my laptop and web if i need them.

How do you guys work with neovim on other non-programming related tasks and still manage to keep everything in sync?

Personally I use insync to sync my notes to the cloud, and then sync them to my devices with similar apps for android.

Then it's just finding apps for editing the notes; everything from neovim on termux to just using Obsidian as a frontend is viable. But mobile is kind of a bad platform for plain text editing imho.

Neovim was started 9 years ago..

Perhaps GP started with archaeovim ;)

Well, you got me there... I worked with vim and 2-3 years ago moved to nvim. The transition has been so smooth that I often confuse the two without noticing :)

Eschewing the need to sync everything was the best adaptation of my workflow. Instead I just transfer stuff to central repositories. My notes are version controlled with git and pushed on a server. Then I used the working copy app on my mobile devices to view them. On the latter, I mostly do transient note taking, and more often than not, I just message myself on WhatsApp. For something like a grocery list, I do them with Reminder.app When I’m back again on my computer, I write down what I want to retain.

Obsidian.nvim (https://github.com/epwalsh/obsidian.nvim) has been working really well for me. I use Obsidian mobile app (it’s not the best in this space, but still very good). And on my laptop, I’ve got neovim - getting to the daily note is one key combo. It’s also super fast and syncs using Obisidan Sync (or you can do your own).

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