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

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

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

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

#7

Post by cadeos » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 9:56 AM UTC

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

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

#8

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 1:21 PM UTC

[deleted]

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

#9

Post by fastasucan » Mon, Jul 27, 2026, 2:35 PM UTC

If people want an open source version of this, jrnl is great.

https://github.com/jrnl-org/jrnl

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

#10

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

Hey cadeos,

Yes, `paper import` handles this. just point it at the folder your daily notes live in:

``` paper import --dry-run ```

Comment: 1. I personally keep all my Obsidian journals in a journal folder, so that's easy for me to do 2. highly recommend you to use the `--dry-run` option if you are not sure what files will be imported

Two things worth knowing. 1. It reads every `.md` and `.txt` inside that folder 2. file with no date in its name is still imported, and last modified date will become its filename in "paper".

You can read more about its logic in the "Importing existing notes" section on the npm page: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@rewrlution/paper-cli

Hope it works and hope you will enjoy it!