JOT — Journey of Thought

JOT is a lightweight, local-first personal knowledge base built using Jupyter Notebooks and VSCode — like Notion, but offline, customizable, and code-native.

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✨ What is JOT?

JOT stands for Journey of Thought — a structured system for managing your ideas, notes, journals, projects, and research using:

• 📓 Jupyter Notebooks for flexible writing and thinking
• 🧠 VSCode as your PKM shell with a clean sidebar UI
• ⚙️ A well-defined folder structure with Git-aware design
• 🚫 .local folders for personal content that stays private

JOT is for builders, tinkerers, and thinkers who want a system they fully own — no vendor lock-in, just your thoughts and tools.

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💡 Why JOT?

Notebooks aren't just for code — they’re perfect for organizing ideas that evolve.

JOT combines the visual clarity of Notion, the power of markdown, and the local-first trust of Git into a workspace you can grow over time.

Use it to:

• Journal your daily thinking
• Capture ideas and project notes
• Track interview prep or research
• Build a searchable, extensible knowledge base

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📁 Folder Structure (Phase 1)

.
├── HOME.ipynb                # Main dashboard
├── Templates/                # Note and journal templates
├── Projects/                 # Public project notes
├── Notes/.local              # Personal notes (not tracked by Git)
├── Journal/.local            # Private journals
├── Interviews/.local         # Interview prep (local-only)
├── Assets/                   # Images, headers
├── .vscode/                  # VSCode settings for consistent UX
├── .gitignore
└── README.md

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🚀 Getting Started

1. Clone the Workspace

git clone https://github.com/your-username/jot.git
cd jot
code jot.code-workspace

2. Launch Your Dashboard

Open HOME.ipynb — this is your main control panel.

3. Create Notes or Journals

• Use templates from Templates/
• Save personal content under .local folders like Notes/.local, Journal/.local

4. Keep Content Local-Only

• Any folder named .local/ is ignored by Git (see .gitignore)
• Store anything private there (e.g., personal notes, prep, journals)
• You can safely push the rest to GitHub

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🛤️ Roadmap

Phase	Feature	Status
1.1	Folder structure, VSCode settings	✅ Complete
1.2	Note templates, collapsible markdown, UI polish	🚧 In Progress
2.0	Tags, search, /commands, @-linking	🧠 Planned
3.0	Full JupyterLab sidebar extension	🔮 Future

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🧠 Philosophy

Think in notebooks, not scattered documents. Code and prose live together. Local-first. Yours to shape.

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🛠️ Built With

• Jupyter
• VSCode
• Markdown + plain text