Keep a daily work log with Note Repo

A useful work log answers two questions: what happened, and what needs your attention next?

You don’t need to reconstruct every hour. Write down the result of a change, the reason behind a decision, and the thing you want to pick up tomorrow. A few concrete bullets make the next morning easier.

Note Repo gives this log a place to live. It opens on today, saves as you type, and lets you scroll back through the days where you wrote something.

What you need

You need Note Repo on a Mac running macOS 14 or later. After purchasing it, connect GitHub in Polar, accept the private repository invitation, and download the app from Releases. The app page covers installation.

This workflow uses the editor. You don’t need its command-line tool or a coding agent, and you can keep your notes offline. Pasting a web link makes a request to that site to fetch its title.

Start with the result

Open Note Repo. If you’re reading an older day, press ⌘D to return to today and start writing.

Give each piece of work its own bullet. Use a project name and a result you could recognize a week later. “Newsletter: fixed mobile signup spacing” tells you more than “Worked on website.”

Here’s a made-up day’s structure:

- Newsletter: fixed mobile signup spacing
  - The email field now fits beside the button on narrow screens
  - Kept the existing form endpoint
- Checkout: decided to show the tax-inclusive total
  - Review the confirmation message tomorrow
- Next: check the receipt on a second email account

Type the top-level line, press Return, then press Tab to put the next item beneath it. Shift+Tab moves an item back out.

Keep the first line readable on its own. Put explanations underneath. You can scan the top-level entries later without rereading every detail.

If a thought needs another line inside the same item, use ⌥Return. Use ordinary Return when it deserves a separate bullet. That distinction helps when one explanation gets long.

The routine looks like this:

Give unfinished work a star

A log records what happened. A star lets you find something that still needs attention.

Click the bullet beside “Next: check the receipt on a second email account.” It becomes starred. Click View starred in the sidebar to see starred items across your days.

Use this for the few things you want to return to. If you star every detail, the starred view becomes another long log to read.

When you’ve done the check, click its star to remove it from that view. Click Today, or press ⌘D, to go back to the normal editor. Record the result in today’s entry, where it belongs.

A star doesn’t schedule a reminder or create a calendar event. It’s a way to collect items from different days. Keep deadlines in a task manager if you need notifications.

Leave enough context to find a decision

Use a consistent project name when you write. “Checkout” on Monday and “Checkout” on Thursday gives search something useful to match.

Press ⌘F or ⌘K, type that name, and choose the relevant day from the results. Search works on note text, so include the words you expect to remember: the component, the customer-facing change, or the reason for a decision.

You can also browse neighboring days with ⌥↑ and ⌥↓. Empty days don’t fill the timeline, so a weekend without notes doesn’t add pages to skip.

A pasted link can provide context too. Note Repo turns it into a link with a title. Put a short explanation beside it so you know why it mattered even if that page later disappears.

Close the day with one useful next step

Before you finish, read today’s top-level bullets. Add any decision still sitting only in your head. Then choose the next concrete action and star it.

“Investigate checkout” leaves tomorrow’s first decision unresolved. “Check the receipt on a second email account” tells you where to start.

You should now have a day you can skim, supporting details you can follow, and a small starred view for unfinished work.

If something looks wrong

If Tab moves focus instead of nesting an item, click inside the note text first. The list shortcuts belong to the editor, not the search field.

If the starred view seems to hide your other notes, click Today. That view filters the notebook; it doesn’t delete the unstarred items.

If search finds nothing, try one distinctive word you actually wrote. A linked page’s full contents aren’t your note text. If a title can’t be fetched while you’re offline, the URL is still useful context.

If the sidebar shows a saving error, resolve it before relying on the entry. Automatic saving still needs the notebook file to be writable and the disk to have space. Your log stays on this Mac, so include it in your normal backup routine.

Get Note Repo

A quiet daily notes app for macOS. Nested lists, images, search, and notes stored on your Mac.

See Note Repo → · $20 including tax, with full source code.

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