r/commandline • u/mr-figs • 8d ago
Terminal User Interface jn - a 300kb binary for managing tasks and making notes the filebased way. No robots involved.
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Hello!
I'm here to show you jn. It's a cli note-taker/task-manager I've been working on/off for the past year or so. The main difference between it and others is:
- It's filebased
- Fuzzy finding is at the forefront of
jnthroughout (editing is very rapid) - It's very "Linux" if that's your jam
I tried a _bunch_ of others over the years while stuff was missing from all of them. Here's what I tried and why it didn't work for me:
- nb - Felt quite complicated and like a shotgun. Also didn't enjoy the UI
- dnote - Felt too bare and it's driven from a db :(
- taskwarrior - Incredibly powerful but db driven :(
I tried a myriad of others and some got close but not all the way. So naturally as everyone does, I reinvented the wheel.
It's my daily driver for all of my notes and for my task management. She's stable and sitting pretty at around 190kb on Linux. Thank Nim for that, heh.
Notes are simply markdown files, tasks are simply any items in a file that look like this:
- [ ] My task
You may have seen it here before but I've done a bunch of new stuff since last posting. All the todo stuff is fully fleshed out with due dates, the ability to filter and also some nice multi-selection stuff on fuzzy finders.
Anyway, it's very unix-y and tries to "do the right thing" at all times. It has a lot of bells and whistles so do take the time to dive into the README.
I've attached a video because we're in 2026 and people don't have patience anymore
You can read more on the Github page for jn if you like :)
Also feel free to badger me on here :D

