Systems & CLI · Beginner
Jot: A Terminal Notes CLI
Build a fast CLI to add, list, search, and tag notes saved locally, packaged as a single installable binary.
Jot is a command-line notes tool that stores plain-text notes in a local SQLite database and ships as a single self-contained binary. You will wire up Cobra commands for adding, listing, searching, and tagging notes, then use Bubble Tea to add a minimal interactive TUI for browsing. Building it teaches the full lifecycle of a real Go CLI tool: argument parsing, embedded database access, structured output, and cross-platform packaging.
What you build
- Add a note from an inline argument or piped stdin with an optional list of tags
- List notes in reverse-chronological order with tag filters and a count limit
- Full-text search across note bodies using SQLite FTS5
- Tag management: add or remove tags on existing notes by ID
- Delete a note by ID with a confirmation prompt
- Interactive TUI browser using Bubble Tea to scroll and preview notes
- Cross-compile to a single static binary installable via go install or a release tarball
What it teaches
- Structuring a multi-command Go CLI with Cobra including flag inheritance and persistent pre-run hooks
- Embedding and migrating a SQLite schema at startup using the database/sql standard library and go-sqlite3
- Using SQLite FTS5 for full-text search without an external search service
- Building a reactive terminal UI with the Bubble Tea Elm-style update loop
- Cross-compiling a CGo binary for multiple platforms and distributing it as a single executable
- Reading from stdin vs positional args to make a CLI tool composable in shell pipelines
How it works
- 1
User runs jot add
- jot add "Buy milk" --tag errand
- 2
Cobra parses command
- Matches add subcommand
- Extracts body and tags flags
- 3
db.Insert()
- Inserts row into notes table
- Indexes body in FTS5 virtual table
- 4
Confirmation printed
- Prints: Added note #42
- 5
jot list or jot tui
- Queries SQLite
- Renders table or Bubble Tea TUI
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Take it further
- Add encrypted storage by wrapping the SQLite file with SQLCipher or encrypting the body column before insert using a key derived from a passphrase.
- Sync notes to a remote server or S3-compatible bucket on `jot push` and pull changes on `jot pull`, using last-write-wins conflict resolution.
- Generate a static HTML export of all notes with `jot export --html`, rendered with Go's `html/template` package and a minimal stylesheet.
