Kaizen

Small improvements, every day.

The compound interest of discipline.

kaizen is a terminal tool for recording daily micro-improvements. Deleted dead code? kaizen done. Renamed a confusing variable? kaizen done. Added a missing test? kaizen done.

No project management. No categories. No priorities. Just a timestamped record of getting better, one small thing at a time.

• Features
• Installation
• Quick Start
• Commands
  • done — Record an Improvement
  • undo — Remove Last Entry
  • today
  • yesterday
  • week
  • month
  • log
  • streak
  • stats
• Philosophy
• Database
• Configuration & Data Location
• Development
• Related
• License

gem install kaizen-log

• Ruby >= 3.0.0

No external gems required.

# Record improvements throughout the day
kaizen done "Removed 3 unused imports"
kaizen done "Split 200-line function into two"
kaizen done "Added timeout to HTTP client"

# Review your day
kaizen today

# Check your streak
kaizen streak

Example output:

$ kaizen done "Removed 3 unused imports"
Recorded #1: Removed 3 unused imports
First improvement today.

$ kaizen done "Added error handling to API call"
Recorded #2: Added error handling to API call
2 improvements today.

$ kaizen today
Today (2):
  [09:15] Removed 3 unused imports
  [14:30] Added error handling to API call

kaizen done "what you improved"

• Maximum 200 characters.
• Timestamped with date and time.
• Shows today's count and current streak.

Examples:

kaizen done "Deleted dead CSS rules"
kaizen done "Renamed confusing variable"
kaizen done "Fixed N+1 query in dashboard"
kaizen done "Removed console.log from production code"
kaizen done "Added index to slow database query"

kaizen undo

Removes the most recently recorded entry. Useful for typos or accidental entries.

kaizen today

Shows all improvements recorded today.

kaizen yesterday

Shows all improvements recorded yesterday.

kaizen week

Shows improvements from the last 7 days, grouped by date.

Example output:

Last 7 days: 9 improvements
------------------------------------
  2026-04-24 (Thu) — 3
    [09:15] Removed unused imports
    [11:00] Added test for edge case
    [16:45] Simplified error handling
  2026-04-23 (Wed) — 2
    [10:30] Fixed typo in README
    [14:00] Removed dead code in utils
  2026-04-22 (Tue) — 4
    ...

kaizen month

Shows improvements from the last 30 days.

kaizen log [days]

• Default: 7 days
• Shows improvements from the last N days.

kaizen log 90    # last 90 days

kaizen streak

Shows your current streak of consecutive days with at least one recorded improvement.

Current streak: 12 days

kaizen stats

Shows all-time statistics.

All time:
  Total improvements: 147
  Active days:        34
  Average per day:    4.3
  Current streak:     12 days
  Today:              3

Kaizen (改善) is the Japanese concept of continuous improvement through small, incremental changes.

This tool does not track tasks, priorities, or deadlines. It tracks what you already did. The difference matters:

• A task list is about the future. Kaizen is about the present.
• A task list creates pressure. Kaizen creates evidence.
• A task list can grow without bound. Kaizen only records what actually happened.

The streak is not a gamification trick. It is a mirror. If it breaks, you know why.

Improvements are stored in a local PStore database. Each entry has the following structure:

The directory is created automatically on first run.

git clone https://github.com/YumaKakuya/kaizen.git
cd kaizen

ruby -Ilib bin/kaizen done "test improvement"

gem build kaizen-log.gemspec

• zen-and-musashi — Japanese wisdom for your terminal
• ronin — Focus timer for the solo developer
• ichigo-ichie — One quote per day, every day different

MIT License. See LICENSE for the full text.

A journey of a thousand miles is built from a single step repeated.