Simple Journal

A self-hosted personal journaling app with three focused entry flows — anger release, gratitude practice, and creative writing with AI-generated prompts. Runs entirely in Docker; no cloud account required.

Features

• Anger journal — one-line guided prompt, rapid-save shortcut, venting without judgment.
• Gratitude journal — randomly drawn from 100 seeded prompts stored in Postgres.
• Creative journal — persona-driven prompts generated by your local or cloud AI; full Markdown editor with live preview.
• AI prompt generation — works with Ollama, OpenAI, Gemini, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Configurable in the Settings page at runtime — no container restart needed.
• Passcode gate — argon2-hashed passcode + JWT cookie; single-user by design.
• Auto-titled entries — 🤬 001, 🥰 042, ✍️ 007 — chronological history with detail view.

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Quick Start — Portainer / copy-paste

Fastest path: download one file, set one password, run one command.

1. Download docker-compose.yml:

   curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dad-guides/simple-journal/main/docker-compose.yml

2. Open the file and replace both occurrences of CHANGE_ME with a strong password:

   POSTGRES_PASSWORD: your-strong-password
   DATABASE_URL: postgres://journal:your-strong-password@db:5432/journal

3. Start the stack:

   docker compose up -d

4. Open http://localhost:3003 and set your passcode.

On first boot the container auto-generates a JWT_SECRET and persists it to the journal-data volume — no manual secret generation needed.

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Quick Start — clone and build

Use this if you want to customise the source before building your own image.

1. Clone the repo:

   git clone https://github.com/dad-guides/simple-journal.git
   cd simple-journal

2. Set the password in docker-compose.yml (same two spots as above).

3. Build and start:

   docker compose up -d --build

4. Open http://localhost:3003 and set your passcode.

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External Postgres

If you already run a Postgres instance and don't want the bundled db service:

0. Set Up Postgres: Before starting, create the database on your external Postgres host:

   psql -h your-postgres-host -U your-admin-user -c "CREATE USER journal WITH PASSWORD 'your-strong-password';"
   
   psql -h your-postgres-host -U your-admin-user -c "CREATE DATABASE journal OWNER journal;"

1. Copy the override example:

   cp docker-compose.override.yml.example docker-compose.override.yml

2. Update DATABASE_URL in docker-compose.yml to point at your external host:

   DATABASE_URL: postgres://user:pass@your-postgres-host:5432/journal

3. docker compose up -d — the bundled db service is disabled automatically.

prisma migrate deploy runs on every startup and is non-destructive — it skips already-applied migrations and never drops data.

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AI Provider

AI prompt generation is optional. Without it, the Creative tab shows a fallback prompt.

Configure the provider in the Settings page at runtime (no restart needed), or set environment variables in docker-compose.yml as operator defaults:

# Ollama (local)
AI_BASE_URL: http://your-ollama-host:11434/v1
AI_MODEL: mistral:latest

# OpenAI
# AI_BASE_URL: https://api.openai.com/v1
# AI_MODEL: gpt-4o-mini
# AI_API_KEY: sk-...

# Gemini
# AI_BASE_URL: https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/openai
# AI_MODEL: gemini-2.0-flash
# AI_API_KEY: AI...

When the AI provider is offline the app saves a fallback prompt and the UI notes it clearly.

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Local Development

cd journal-web
cp ../.env.example ../.env   # fill in DATABASE_URL and other vars
npm install
npm run dev                  # http://localhost:3003

Ensure a Postgres instance is reachable at the DATABASE_URL you set (the bundled Docker Compose db service works fine).

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Scripts

Command	Description
npm run dev	Next.js dev server on port 3003
npm run build	Production build
npm run lint	ESLint with Next.js config
npm test	Vitest unit tests
npm run db:migrate	prisma migrate deploy
npm run db:seed	Upsert counters, user, prompts, personas

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Architecture

Component	Purpose
journal-web	Next.js App Router — UI + API routes
db (postgres:16-alpine)	Stores users, entries, prompts, personas, counters
journal-data volume	Persists auto-generated JWT_SECRET across restarts

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Troubleshooting

Symptom	Fix
Container exits immediately	Check docker compose logs journal-web — most likely DATABASE_URL is wrong or db isn't healthy yet
Can't log in after recreating the journal-data volume	A new JWT_SECRET was generated; existing cookies are invalid — just log in again
AI prompts show "fallback" badge	AI provider unreachable; check AI_BASE_URL and model name in Settings or docker-compose.yml
No gratitude prompts	Re-run the seed: docker compose exec journal-web node prisma/seed.js
No creative personas	Same as above