MojoPad

The Journal

Daily Notes gives you one day at a time. The Journal gives you all of them at once — a single scrolling page where every day flows into the last, so you can write today, glance up at yesterday, and keep a running thread without ever opening a page. Think of it as a river of your days rather than a stack of files.

Open it with the 📔 Journal button in the toolbar, from Go ▸ Journal, or with ⇧⌘J. The caret lands in today, ready to type. To leave, click ✕ Exit journal in the header (or open any other page).

It's the same days you already keep

A day in the Journal is its daily note — the very page ⌘T opens. Write in the stream and you're writing that note; open it later from the Calendar and your words are there. Nothing new to file, no second copy. The Journal is just a different window onto the notes you already keep — which means links, tags, templates, versions, and export all work exactly as they do everywhere else.

Writing in the stream

Today sits at the top; scroll down and you walk backwards through time, oldest at the bottom. Each day is a card — a bordered sheet with the day's name in serif ("Today" and "Yesterday" keep their familiar names) and the date in quiet small caps. Today's card wears a warm tint so the present is unmistakable. Only days you've written on appear — empty days don't clutter the river — but today is always there, waiting with a blank line even before you've typed a word. Start writing and the day quietly becomes real.

Mood and energy — one tap each

Under every day's header sit two tiny instruments: MOOD, five faces from rough to great, and ENERGY, five pips for how much was in the tank. One tap records the day (tap again to clear); on an unwritten today, the first tap creates the day, same as typing would. They're deliberately effortless — no prose required, no streak to keep.

The payoff comes later: the trackers are stored as tidy metadata on the day's page (never mixed into your writing), and Ask your journal and ✦ Reflect read them beside your words. "How was my week?" can now notice that your energy dipped the two days you wrote about staying up late — the pattern lives in the taps, the story lives in the prose, and the AI finally gets both.

  • Everything the editor does, the stream does. Headings, checklists, tables, images, / commands, drag-to-reorder blocks — a Journal day is a full page, not a cramped text box.
  • Type a page's name and it links itself. Auto-linking is live right in the stream, so mentioning an existing page turns it blue and clickable as you write — the same connective tissue you get anywhere in the wiki.
  • Set your width. The S · M · L · F control sizes the writing column to your taste, the same measure the rest of MojoPad uses.
  • The theme is your theme. The Journal wears whatever light or dark theme you've chosen — no separate look to manage.

Wandered far down the river? The ↑ Today button floats up whenever you scroll away — one click snaps you back to the top and drops the caret in today.

Jump to any day — the Calendar

Click the calendar icon in the header and a month opens beside the writing column. Days you've written on are marked, today wears a distinct highlight, and ‹ › walk the months. Click a day and the Journal glides to it if it's already in view, or opens it if it isn't — either way you land on that day, ready to read or add to it, even one long past. Click the calendar icon again to tuck it away.

Find a thread — filter the river

Press ⌘F (or type in the header's search box) and the stream narrows to just the days that mention what you're looking for — a name, a project, a phrase. Clear it and the full river returns. It's the fastest way to see how an idea has run through your days.

Things the Journal brings to today

At the top of today, MojoPad quietly surfaces a few things worth your attention — each one dismissable, none of it in your way:

  • On this day. What you wrote on this date in months or years past, so anniversaries and old trains of thought find their way back to you. Close it and it stays away for the rest of the day — tomorrow brings tomorrow's memories.
  • Carry over. Unfinished to-dos from recent days, gathered up so nothing quietly falls off the bottom of the river. Bring one forward with a click.
  • Worth revisiting. A note your recent writing has drifted near — surfaced by the same on-device intelligence behind resurfacing (see When Your Wiki Thinks Back). Not in the mood? Close it and it stays gone for the rest of the day.
  • ✦ Beyond your notes. The inverse of resurfacing: once a day, your local AI reads your recent themes and pitches a few ideas related to what you think about but missing from your wiki — the concept you almost chased and then lost. Click a pitch and MojoPad opens an Ask conversation about it, so exploring is one click and the idea can become a page. Pitches wait until you explore or dismiss them — a busy morning can't eat them — and ↻ deals a fresh hand. Everything runs on your Mac (see Local AI).
  • 📥 In your inbox and ✦ Weekly review — capture triage and the weekly ritual, both part of The Practice; see that chapter for the full walkthrough.
  • ✦ Where your notes disagree — two of your own notes, weighed against each other, when they genuinely argue. Your March self against your November self. Open either one, or wave the pair off as settled. It is quiet most days on purpose; see When Your Wiki Thinks Back.

The idea cards are yours to run or silence, in Settings ▸ Journal: Resurface old notes worth revisiting and Pitch ideas beyond your notes ship on; Look for places my own notes disagree is off until you turn it on.

Ask your journal

Click ✦ Ask in the Journal's masthead and the AI drawer opens in its Journal scope, pointed at your daily notes and nothing else. Ask in plain language: “how was my week?”, “when did I last mention the boat?”, “what patterns keep showing up this month?”. Time phrases in the question choose which days are read — “in June”, “last week”, “since April” — and without one, your recent couple of months are read. Every written day in the window goes in (a long stretch is read in condensed stages — watch the status line), and the answer cites the days it drew from as chips you can click to jump to that day. It's the same drawer as everywhere else, so follow-ups keep their context and personas apply; see Ask your wiki — the AI drawer for the full tour. Where ✦ Reflect below hands you a fixed weekly synthesis, ✦ Ask answers the question you bring.

Reflect on where you've been

(Reflections read your mood and energy taps alongside your words — see Mood and energy above.)

Click ✦ Reflect and choose a stretch — this week, this month, or the last 90 days. Your local AI reads those days and hands back a short synthesis: the themes running through them, the open loops still waiting, and a thing or two worth sitting with. Like it? ↳ Insert into today drops the reflection straight into today's note, so a weekly review becomes part of the record instead of a passing glance. (Reflect uses your on-device model — see Local AI. No model, no cloud, no reflection; your days never leave your Mac.)

Capture into today from anywhere

An idea worth keeping rarely arrives while you're in the Journal. So today is a drop box you can reach from across the app:

  • Send to today lives on the block ⠿ menu and on a canvas card's menu — pluck a paragraph or a sticky and it lands at the bottom of today's note.
  • Selection ▸ Send to today tucks away a highlighted passage while you read.
  • Capture to Today… in the ⇧⌘P command palette opens a quick box for a one-line thought without leaving what you're doing.

Everything you send arrives in the same place — today's page — whether the Journal is open or not.

Linked references

Under a day you'll find Linked references — every page that points back to that day, each with a snippet of where it's mentioned. Anywhere you've written the date (a task dated to it, a meeting note, a page that links [[Thursday, June 11, 2026]]), it gathers here, turning the day into a hub you can navigate backwards from. Click a reference to jump to it. It appears only on days something actually points to.

Across midnight

Leave the Journal open overnight and it notices when the day turns: come back and today has rolled forward on its own, a fresh blank day waiting at the top. As always, "today" is figured in the time zone you set in Settings ▸ Locale & Dates, so travelling never forks your journal.