Show HN: Paper – A Journaling CLI for Developers • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Paper – A Journaling CLI for Developers

#11

Post by dmsehuang » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 4:36 PM UTC

level87 wrote: post #5

I've been looking for something like this for a while. Thank you!

Hey level87, hope you will enjoy it and let us know if you run into any issues or have any feature requests!

We are all ears!

Re: Show HN: Paper – A Journaling CLI for Developers

#12

Post by dmsehuang » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 4:38 PM UTC

j4cobgarby wrote: post #6

dmsehuang wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello llagerlof, nope, it is not open source. Here's the link to the npm package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@rewrlution/paper-cli

Am I missing something? How is it not open source if I can view the source code at that link?

haha, you got it!

I published the CLI tool with the sourcemap enabled prev-v1.0.0

That's why you can see the source code.

Re: Show HN: Paper – A Journaling CLI for Developers

#13

Post by dmsehuang » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 4:41 PM UTC

fastasucan wrote: post #9

If people want an open source version of this, jrnl is great. https://github.com/jrnl-org/jrnl

Oh wow, that's a very popular one! I did not know that before. I am gonna give it a try and compare these tools. Thanks for the info!

Re: Show HN: Paper – A Journaling CLI for Developers

#14

Post by sankaran458 » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 5:30 PM UTC

Wow! now i dont have to switch beetween onenote and terminal for my notes!

Re: Show HN: Paper – A Journaling CLI for Developers

#15

Post by hillgam » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 7:05 PM UTC

dmsehuang wrote: post #4

llagerlof wrote: post #3

Is it open source? What is the repository?

Hello llagerlof, nope, it is not open source. Here's the link to the npm package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@rewrlution/paper-cli

Do you have any plans to make it open source in the future?

Re: Show HN: Paper – A Journaling CLI for Developers

#16

Post by dmsehuang » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 7:16 PM UTC

sankaran458 wrote: post #14

Wow! now i dont have to switch beetween onenote and terminal for my notes!

Hey sankaran458, I am so glad to see this comment, and I hope this CLI tool can truly do its work to save people’s pain points. I hope this is not “yet another” useless tool that tries to simplify the workflow.

Give it a try and let me know your feedback if there’s any!

Hope you will enjoy it!

Re: Show HN: Paper – A Journaling CLI for Developers

#17

Post by dmsehuang » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 7:46 PM UTC

hillgam wrote: post #15

dmsehuang wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello llagerlof, nope, it is not open source. Here's the link to the npm package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@rewrlution/paper-cli

Do you have any plans to make it open source in the future?

The tldr is yes, but not sure about which part will be open source and which part will remain private, and when.

The API & web app components will definitely remain private, but the CLI tool itself can be open source.

If you run ‘paper config’ today, you will still see that you can configure the “sync url” - basically that allows you to sync your content to your own hosting provider.

I spent non-trivial thought on this topic during development, but then ended up with a conclusion that I should just make it private for now to speed up feature development. Otherwise I would need to think really hard on the interface & contract design.

Re: Show HN: Paper – A Journaling CLI for Developers

#18

Post by dmsehuang » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 1:52 AM UTC

cadeos wrote: post #7

Great project. Any plans to let users point the CLI directly to an existing Obsidian vault for the markdown files?

Oh wait, I think I misunderstood your question!

You can use ‘paper config’ to specify the working directory, then all the journals will be saved to that path.