The observe of journaling is quickly vanishing. At one time, the leather-bound diary or the composition ebook served as a repository for every part from mundane day by day observations to the deepest existential crises. Recording these ideas and observations required an individual to sit down in silence, replicate on their experiences, and commit their inner world to paper.
At this time, the examined life has largely migrated from the personal web page to the general public social media feed. With this transformation, writing has develop into extra performative than reflective. The deliberate tempo of handwriting has additionally been sped up by the quick tempo of digital instruments. Briefly, the observe of self-reflection is fading, and that isn’t good for any of us.
The {hardware} (📷: cristal-orion)
GitHub person cristal-orion nonetheless sees journaling as an essential observe, and has developed a distraction-free digital instrument to get essentially the most from it. Referred to as Reminor, it’s an AI-powered private diary. As you write your ideas, Reminor analyzes them, remembers them, and chats with you about them. All of that is that can assist you get extra out of your journal entries — issues which may be misplaced within the a whole lot of pages that accumulate through the years.
In contrast to most fashionable AI journaling platforms, Reminor just isn’t a web site or a subscription service. It’s designed to run domestically on a Raspberry Pi. The system hosts its personal internet interface and backend, storing each entry instantly on the gadget. Customers sort on an exterior keyboard, and cristal-orion used a 4-inch Waveshare LCD mounted inside a 3D-printed case, making a devoted writing equipment that sits quietly on a desk and consumes below 5 watts of energy.
Beneath the hood, the Pi runs a Docker-based software program stack composed of a Svelte frontend and a FastAPI backend. Journal entries are saved as easy dated textual content information. Reminor processes every entry utilizing native embedding fashions that convert writing into mathematical vectors — numerical representations of which means. These vectors are saved utilizing a system known as Memvid, which compresses them into video frames to preserve storage whereas enabling semantic search. As a substitute of looking for particular phrases, a person can ask questions like “when was I apprehensive about work?” and retrieve associated passages written months or years aside.
An in depth-up of the gadget (📷: cristal-orion)
The system additionally tracks emotional tone throughout eight dimensions, visualizing long-term temper traits and writing streaks. An built-in chat interface permits the person to ask questions on their very own previous; the software program retrieves related entries and makes use of an AI mannequin to summarize patterns or connections. Importantly, all of this will run offline utilizing native fashions. Distant giant language mannequin APIs from suppliers comparable to OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google are non-compulsory and solely used if the person explicitly permits them.
For those who’d wish to check out Reminor for your self, begin by trying over the GitHub repository.—