zsh-journal

A simple Zsh plugin that lets you attach notes to shell commands you have run. Handy for remembering what a oneliner was actually doing when you look back at it later.

What it does

You run a command like this:

$ ffmpeg -i input.mov -vf scale=1280:-2 output.mp4

Then right after:

$ note "Resize video to 720p width, preserve aspect ratio"

Now that command and your note are saved. You can list everything you've saved with:

$ notes

[1] ffmpeg -i input.mov -vf scale=1280:-2 output.mp4
→ Resize video to 720p width, preserve aspect ratio

That’s it.

Installation

With Oh-my-zsh

Clone into Oh My Zsh's custom plugin directory:

git clone https://github.com/onurhanak/zsh-journal ~/.oh-my-zsh/custom/plugins/zsh-journal

Then add it to your plugins:

plugins=(git zsh-journal)
source ~/.zshrc

With Antidote

Add the plugin to your .zsh_plugins.txt file:

$ echo onurhanak/zsh-journal >> .zsh_plugins.txt

Rebuild and reload:

$ antidote bundle < ~/.zsh_plugins.txt > ~/.zsh_plugins.zsh
$ source ~/.zsh_plugins.zsh

Manual

Clone the repo somewhere:

$ git clone https://github.com/onurhanak/zsh-journal ~/.zsh-journal

Source it in your .zshrc:

source ~/.zsh-journal/zsh-journal.plugin.zsh

Restart your terminal or run source ~/.zshrc and you're good to go.

Usage

• $ note "your description"
  Saves a note for the last command you ran.

• $ notes
  Lists all saved command + note pairs.

If you try to note a command you have already saved before, it will ask if you want to overwrite the previous note.

Where it stores data

By default, it saves everything to:

~/.zsh-journal.txt

You can change that by setting an environment variable in your .zshrc:

export ZSH_JOURNAL_FILE="/path/to/.my_custom_journal_file.txt"

Gotchas

• You need to run note immediately after the command you want to save.

Why did I make this?

Because there is no way I'll remember all the different rsync, ffmpeg etc. flags.