Journal & Reflections

How it works

The mechanics of this kit, plainly — what runs and when, where the data lands, and what you look at.

• Evening prompt runs every evening · 8:30pm. Daily — one considered question, and nothing if you would rather not.
• Weekly lookback runs sundays · 6pm and keeps the Reflections dashboard fresh. Sundays — the week in a sentence, and the board brought up to date.
• What is captured lands in the Mood log dataset, which lives at Data/Mood Log in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• The Reflections dashboard reads from the dataset and shows, at a glance: entries · how the months have felt · what your days turn on · evenings you wrote · themes lately · your week in a sentence.

The wiring, in one breath: Journal capture writes to Mood log · Mood log shown by Reflections · Reflections kept fresh by Weekly lookback · Journal capture given to Diarist · Journal lookback given to Diarist · Journal book given to Diarist · Diarist runs Evening prompt.

Getting the most from it

A kit earns its place when it changes what you look at and what you say, not when it is installed. This is the rhythm that makes it pay.

• Answer the evening question in your own words when it comes, and skip it when it does not suit — a night you skip is a night you skip. Write at other times too; capture works whenever you do.
• Read Reflections once a week, after the Sunday lookback, rather than daily. The picture is in the months, not the days.
• Ask Journal lookback real questions — "what was March like", "when did I last feel this stuck", "what did I write on this day last year" — and hear them answered from your own entries. When you wrote on one of the week's dates in an earlier year, the Sunday note ends with a line from that entry.
• Tell Diarist what you want the journal for, and the kind of question you would like: a reflection on the day, something you are grateful for, or one of your own. The questions become more searching, or gentler, to match.
• Move the question to an hour you are actually free. A question at the wrong time becomes noise. Move it to the morning and it asks about the day ahead; there is still only one a day.
• Send a photo with an entry and it is kept beside that day's note. Speak an entry with the microphone and the text the app makes of it is your entry. A recording sent as a file is kept with the entry too, but Diarist does not listen to it.
• At the end of a year, ask Diarist for it as a book. Journal book gathers every entry, in order and exactly as you wrote it, into one document in your vault, which you can export from there as a PDF or a Word file.

Make it yours

Nothing here is fixed. The pieces are ordinary agents, routines, datasets and dashboards, so anything you know about shaping those applies. Retire whatever earns nothing.

Things people usually change first

Say any of these in chat, or edit them on the kit’s page in the app.

• What time the evening question arrives, or turning it off entirely and just writing when you feel like it.
• How searching the question is, and which subjects it should leave alone.
• The kind of question: a reflection on the day, something you are grateful for, a morning question about the day ahead, or one of your own.
• What a book is called, and which stretch of the journal it gathers.
• Where entries are filed in your vault, and how the notes are named.
• Whether Sunday brings a lookback note at all, or just quietly updates the board.

Your first run

Installing starts a short setup conversation — not a form. Answer roughly, correct later.

1. Installing ends with "Meet Diarist" — and Diarist simply asks tonight's question: what was today like, and what did it turn on. There is nothing to set up first; your first answer is your first entry.
2. It lands as a dated note in your vault plus one line on the log — how the day felt, how much you had in the tank, what it was about — read from your words, never a score you're asked for.
3. In the same sitting Diarist settles the one practical fact: when the evening question should come. Half past eight is the default, any time is fine, and "never — I'll write when I feel like it" is a first-class answer.
4. The board starts empty on purpose — there is no history to import, and the picture is the thing that accrues.
5. Skip the conversation and the door quietly stays open: until the first entry exists, the kit page, the board and Diarist's chat all keep tonight's question ready.

Watch the first pass, then tell it what you would have done differently — that correction teaches it more than any setup could.

The essentials

Learning, preferences and run costs work the same in every kit — so they are covered once, in the Kits guide.

Living with a Kit — the Kits guide →

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