A terminal scratchpad inspired by Heynote.
As mentioned on Heynote's GitHub page, it is "a dedicated scratchpad for developers. It functions as a large persistent text buffer where you can write down anything you like." This app is truly great, and I've quite enjoyed using it as dedicated scratchpad. However, I work in the terminal, and I was finding several workflows in which having a terminal based scratchpad would be nice. Enter Thoth! Thoth follows the same design philosophy as Heynote in terms of its simplicity, but with some key differences.
- The persistent buffer in Thoth gets saved as a markdown file in your home directory. I did this since I use Obsidian for all of my notes, and I wanted my scratchpad to also be displayable in the app.
- Blocks are titled and can be selected by title.
- The ability to edit a block using your favorite terminal editor such as Neovim, Helix, Vim, and others via setting the
$EDITORor$VISUALenvironment variables. - A CLI that allows one to pipe information via STDIN into a new block, or use STDOUT to get text out of a block.
In Egyptology, Thoth is the god of writing, wisdom, and magic. Thoth was in charge of messenging and recording knowledge and events for the Egyptian deities. Seems like a fitting name for a persistent scratchpad :).
brew tap jooaf/homebrew-thoth
brew install thothIf you have cargo installed on your machine, you can download directly from crates.io
cargo install thoth-cli --lockedYou can install from the AUR using an AUR helper like so:
paru -S thothYou can install the .deb for your platform by doing the following (note: the URL is an example. To get the latest release please look at the Releases section)
# x86-64
curl -LO https://github.com/jooaf/thoth/releases/download/v0.1.30/thoth_0.1.30_linux_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i thoth_0.1.30_linux_amd64.deb
# ARM64
curl -LO https://github.com/jooaf/thoth/releases/download/v0.1.30/thoth_0.1.30_linux_arm64.deb
sudo dpkg -i thoth_0.1.30_linux_arm64.debYou can install the .rpm for your platform by doing the following (note: the URL is an example. To get the latest release please look at the Releases section)
# x86-64
https://github.com/jooaf/thoth/releases/download/v0.1.30/thoth_0.1.30_linux_amd64.rpm
sudo rpm -i thoth_0.1.30_linux_amd64.rpm
# ARM64
curl -LO https://github.com/jooaf/thoth/releases/download/v0.1.30/thoth_0.1.30_linux_arm64.rpm
sudo dpkg -i thoth_0.1.30_linux_arm64.rpmGo to the releases page, and download the .tar.gz associated with your OS (Note: currently supports Linux and MacOS).
Once you have downloaded the zip file, go to the location where you downloaded the file, uncompress, and give the binary executable permissions by doing the following:
cd /path/to/binary
chmod +x thothYou can then move binary if you choose so. Finally, add the path of the binary to your $PATH.
To build from source, please make sure that you have the Rust compiler installed (version 1.70.0 or higher), and the Cargo package manager. You can install both by installing rustup.
Once you have installed Rust, please do the following:
git clone https://github.com/jooaf/thoth.git
cd thoth
cargo build --releaseThe binary lives in thoth/target/release/thoth. You can add the binary to your $PATH.
This will show how to use the scratchpad via the CLI or the TUI.
To start the TUI, simple type thoth. Since it is a persistent buffer, thoth will save when you hit quit using q.
q: Quit
<ctrl-n>: Add block in focus
<ctrl-d>: Delete block in focus
<ctrl-y>: Copy the complete block
Enter: Edit block
<ctrl-f>: Full Screen
Esc: Exit
<ctrl-t>: Change title of block
<ctrl-s>: Select block by title
<ctrl-j>: Format json
<ctrl-k>: Format markdown
Esc: Exit edit mode
<ctrl-g>: Move cursor top
<ctrl-b>: Copy highlighted selection
Shift-Up Arrow or Down: Make highlighted selection by line
<ctrl-y>: Copy the entire block
<ctrl-t>: Change title of block
<ctrl-s>: Select block by title
<ctrl-e>: Use external editor
<ctrl-h>: Bring up other commands
The other commands are based off of the default keybindings
for editing in tui-textarea.
| MAPPINGS | DESCRIPTIONS |
|---|---|
| Ctrl+H, Backspace | Delete one character before cursor |
| Ctrl+K | Delete from cursor until the end of line |
| Ctrl+W, Alt+Backspace | Delete one word before cursor |
| Alt+D, Alt+Delete | Delete one word next to cursor |
| Ctrl+U | Undo |
| Ctrl+R | Redo |
| Ctrl+C, Copy | Copy selected text |
| Ctrl+X, Cut | Cut selected text |
| Ctrl+P, ↑ | Move cursor up by one line |
| Ctrl+→ | Move cursor forward by word |
| Ctrl+← | Move cursor backward by word |
| Ctrl+↑ | Move cursor up by paragraph |
| Ctrl+↓ | Move cursor down by paragraph |
| Ctrl+E, End, Ctrl+Alt+F, Ctrl+Alt+→ | Move cursor to the end of line |
| Ctrl+A, Home, Ctrl+Alt+B, Ctrl+Alt+← | Move cursor to the head of line |
| Ctrl+K | Format markdown block |
| Ctrl+J | Format JSON |
If you would like to use your external editor -- such as NeoVim, Helix, etc. -- Thoth offers that functionality.
For accessing the CLI, one can use thoth followed by a command.
A terminal scratchpad akin to Heynote
Usage: thoth [COMMAND]
Commands:
add Add a new block to the scratchpad
list List all of the blocks within your thoth scratchpad
delete Delete a block by name
view View (STDOUT) the contents of the block by name
copy Copy the contents of a block to the system clipboard
help Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)
Options:
-h, --help Print help
-V, --version Print version
# For adding new blocks
thoth add hello_world "Hello, World!";
# For adding new blocks with content from STDIN
echo "Hello, World (from STDIN)" | thoth add hello_world_stdin;
# Using view to pipe contents into another command
thoth view hello_world_stdin | catContributions are always welcomed :) !!! Please take a look at this doc for more information.
- Inlcude light mode
- Automatically saving backup
thoth_notes.mdfiles: Done!