second-brain

A personal knowledge base for capturing notes, todos, journal entries, and daily work logs — with a built-in standup generator for end-of-day reporting.

Cheat Sheet

Command	What it does
todo <the thing you want to remember>	Adds a todo item
todos	Shows all your todos
note "<your note text>"	Saves a quick note
log <what just happened>	Adds a timestamped bullet to today's journal
journal	Shows today's journal entries
import_log	Paste a work log from another tool into today's journal
standup	Generates your Basecamp check-in from today's journal
sb	Opens the visual app (press Ctrl+C to quit)

How to use import_log

1. Type import_log and press Enter
2. Paste your work log contents
3. Press Ctrl+D (hold Control, tap D) — this tells the terminal you're done
4. It will confirm: "Work log added to today's journal"

How to open Claude Code in this project

1. Open a terminal window
2. Type: cd ~/claude-code-course/playground/second-brain
3. Type: claude

Installation

Clone the repository and install dependencies:

git clone <repo-url>
cd second-brain
uv sync

Usage

Save a note

uv run second_brain new "My brilliant idea about caching"

Add an optional --title for a shorter, more meaningful filename:

uv run second_brain new "My brilliant idea about caching" --title "caching idea"

Saves as 2026-03-22_caching-idea.md — the full note text is still inside the file.

List your notes

uv run second_brain list

Shows the notes folder path and a numbered list of all your saved notes.

Read a note

uv run second_brain show 1

Prints the content of note #1 (use the number from second_brain list).

This saves a markdown file to your notes folder with a filename like 2026-03-22_my-brilliant-idea-about-caching.md.

With dev environment loaded:

uv run --env-file .env second_brain new "My brilliant idea"

Environment Variables

Copy .env.example to .env for development:

cp .env.example .env

Variable	Default	Description
LOG_LEVEL	INFO	Console log level. Set to DEBUG in .env for verbose output.
LOG_FILE	app.log	Path to the log file.
NOTES_DIR	~/second_brain	Folder where notes are saved. Created automatically if it doesn't exist.

Note: uv run --env-file .env loads the dev environment explicitly — there is no auto-loading.

Testing

Run tests:

uv run pytest

Run tests with coverage:

uv run pytest --cov

Documentation

Preview docs locally:

uv run python scripts/serve_docs.py

Build static docs:

uv run mkdocs build