🧠 Better Dontforget

🍴 A fork of bugswriter/dontforget.

Better Dontforget is a focused improvement of the upstream dontforget project: an AI-assisted terminal tool for quickly capturing and retrieving small personal memory dumps, with a better TUI, configurable AI providers, optional reminders with persistent desktop notifications, optional per-note encryption, XDG-compliant storage, and CLI/TUI-based configuration.

It is a quick personal memory-dump tool. Reminders and encryption are optional and per-note. It is not a calendar, task manager, or full notes application.

✨ Features

• ⚡ Zero-friction capture: bdf "anything". Works offline; your input is never lost even if the AI is unavailable.
• 🔍 Search & AI recall: full-text search (search) and AI-assisted answers (remind) over your memories (SQLite + FTS5).
• 🤖 Multiple AI providers: Gemini (default), OpenAI-compatible (OpenAI, OpenRouter, self-hosted), and Groq — behind a small provider abstraction.
• 🖥️ Improved TUI: live preview pane, in-place editing, encryption, reminders, settings, and a dark/light theme toggle — all keyboard-driven.
• ⏰ Optional reminders: attach a due time via --remind or natural language ("remind me tomorrow to …").
• 🔔 Desktop notifications: due reminders notify via notify-send (libnotify), with a one-shot notify-pending command and a systemd user timer.
• 📦 One-command notifier setup: bdf install-notifier installs and enables the systemd timer — no manual file copying.
• 🔐 Optional per-note encryption: authenticated (Fernet + PBKDF2), passphrase-based, explicit per note; encrypted content is never sent to AI.
• 📁 XDG-compliant storage and CLI/TUI configuration (no manual file editing).

📦 Install

From PyPI:

pip install better-dontforget
bdf config set provider gemini
bdf config set api_key "$GEMINI_API_KEY"

Or with uv:

uv tool install better-dontforget

Or, for development from source:

uv sync
bdf "anything"

The short alias bdf is installed alongside better-dontforget.

🚀 Quick start

bdf "ratatui was that rust tui library"
bdf "John recommended Severance"
bdf "remind me tomorrow 9am to check that library"
bdf search "rust tui"
bdf remind "what rust tui library was recommended?"
bdf list
bdf tui

Run bdf --help for the full list of commands and options.

See docs/docs.md for full usage and docs/config.md for configuration.

⏰ Reminders & notifications

Attach a reminder to any note:

bdf --remind "tomorrow 9am" "check the library"

To have reminders delivered automatically (even while the app is closed), install the notifier with a single command:

bdf install-notifier      # installs + enables a systemd user timer
bdf uninstall-notifier    # removes it

bdf remind (and capturing a note with --remind) will print a hint to run bdf install-notifier when the notifier isn't active, so you never silently lose a reminder.

Linux-only: desktop notifications and the systemd timer use libnotify / systemd user units. Core capture/search/recall works everywhere Python does.

🛠️ Development

just install     # uv sync
just check       # format + lint + type + tests + build (canonical gate)
just test
just lint
just fmt
just type

📄 License

GPL-3.0. Upstream dontforget by Suraj Kushwah; legacy server/client retained under legacy/ for attribution.

🙏 Credits

Better Dontforget is a fork of bugswriter/dontforget by Suraj Kushwah. The original SQLite + FTS5 storage engine and AI-assisted capture/recall concept are carried over and extended; the legacy FastAPI server and bash curl client are preserved under legacy/ for reference.