Day One CLI

Command-line access to your Day One account, journals, entries, daily chat, and context items.

The CLI is designed for scriptable workflows and machine-readable output (JSON-first).

Prerequisites

• Node.js LTS installed (node --version, npm --version)
• A Day One account with valid credentials
• Network access to Day One API endpoints

Installation

Install via npm:

npm install -g @dayone/cli

Confirm install:

dayone --help

Upgrading from the old Day One CLI

If you are upgrading from the old Day One CLI, remove the legacy binary first:

sudo rm /usr/local/bin/dayone

AI Agent Skills (Optional)

This repository ships a single agent skill at skills/dayone-cli/ for AI agent integrations like Claude Code, Cursor, and similar. The top-level SKILL.md is the entry point, with per-command-group references under skills/dayone-cli/references/.

Install:

npx skills add bloom/dayone-cli-skills

Quick Start

1. Run guided setup:

dayone setup

Setup also asks whether to set an encryption key now; you can skip and run dayone auth key-set later.

2. Or run login only:

dayone auth login --email [email protected]

Password from stdin:

# Prompt for password without echo; it will not be stored in shell history
read -s -p 'Day One password: ' DAYONE_PASSWORD && printf '%s' "$DAYONE_PASSWORD" | dayone auth login --email [email protected] --password-stdin
unset DAYONE_PASSWORD

3. Verify current identity and token:

dayone auth whoami
dayone user-settings get

4. Sync remote data locally:

dayone sync

5. Start using data:

dayone list journals
dayone list entries --journal-id <journal-id> --limit 20
dayone list entries --journal-id <journal-id> --limit 20 --offset 20
dayone list entries --journal-id <journal-id> --fields id,date,tags,body
dayone list entries --journal-id <journal-id> --sort-method editDate

Common Commands

Entries

Write an entry:

dayone entry write --journal-id <journal-id> --body "My new entry"

Write an all-day entry (time ignored on display):

dayone entry write --journal-id <journal-id> --date 2026-03-31T09:30:00Z --all-day --body "Daily summary"

Write an entry with attachments (repeat --attach):

dayone entry write --journal-id <journal-id> --body "Trip notes" --attach /path/to/photo.jpg --attach /path/to/itinerary.pdf

Place media inline with Day One Web placeholders:

dayone entry write --journal-id <journal-id> --body $'Trip notes\n\n![](dayone-moment://)\n\nMore notes' --attach /path/to/photo.jpg

Use existing moment IDs directly:

dayone entry write --journal-id <journal-id> --body $'Look back\n\n![](dayone-moment://AFC7155130AF46E497A7C8D1C70D7731)'

Optionally pin attachment types explicitly:

dayone entry write --journal-id <journal-id> --body "Voice memo" --attach /path/to/memo.m4a --attach-type audio

Write from stdin:

printf '%s' 'My new entry from stdin' | dayone entry write --journal-id <journal-id> --body-stdin

Soft-delete an entry (requires both journal and entry ids):

dayone entry delete --journal-id <journal-id> --entry-id <entry-id>

List entries with projected fields (smaller JSON payloads):

dayone list entries --journal-id <journal-id> --fields id,date,tags,body

--fields accepts a comma-separated list of top-level entry keys. When omitted, full entry objects are returned. Missing keys are returned as null.

--sort-method accepts entryDate or editDate. When omitted, the command follows the journal's sort_method (defaulting to entryDate if unavailable). For cursor pagination, reuse the same --sort and --sort-method values between pages; changing either can skip or duplicate entries.

Paginate entries with offset mode:

dayone list entries --journal-id <journal-id> --limit 20 --offset 40

Paginate entries with cursor mode (opaque cursor token):

dayone list entries --journal-id <journal-id> --limit 20
# copy `next_cursor` from JSON output
dayone list entries --journal-id <journal-id> --limit 20 --cursor "<next_cursor>"

Journals

Create a journal from flags:

dayone journal create --name "CLI Journal" --color "#2f5d62" --conceal true

Create from JSON:

dayone journal create --json '{"name":"JSON Journal","color":"#5f4b8b","hide_all_entries":true}'

Create a shared journal (shared journals must be end-to-end encrypted):

dayone journal create --name "Shared Space" --shared --e2e

Shared journals require end-to-end encrypted data. The --e2e flag is one way to have the CLI generate that encrypted payload; if you provide an already-encrypted JSON payload, --shared can also be used without --e2e. Using --e2e requires dayone auth key-set and a prior dayone sync so the CLI has your encryption key and synced user key material.

Daily Chat

List daily chats:

dayone list daily-chat

Append a message:

dayone daily-chat add --message "Today I shipped a feature"

Context Items

List synced context items:

dayone list context-items

Search context items:

dayone search context-items --query "playing tennis" --limit 20

Encryption Key (for decrypt-enabled sync resources)

Shortcut during onboarding (login + key set):

dayone setup

Set key interactively:

dayone auth key-set

Set key from stdin:

printf '%s' 'your-encryption-key' | dayone auth key-set --key-stdin

Updating the encryption key resets stored sync cursors so the next sync re-pulls resources from the beginning.

Configuration

Default config path uses your OS config directory (for example, ~/.config/dayone-cli on many systems).

Override config directory:

DAYONE_CONFIG_DIR=/path/to/config dayone user-settings get

Shared secrets file (CLI)

On startup, before parsing arguments, the CLI loads KEY=value lines from ~/.config/dayone/secrets-cli when that file exists (dotenv format, via the dotenvy crate). Values already set in the process environment are left unchanged, so explicit export / CI secrets take precedence. Use this for local CLI-only variables such as DAYONE_API_HOST without checking them into the repo.

Output and Notes

• Command output is structured JSON.
• sync progress logs are written to stderr with [sync] prefixes.
• Auth/session data is persisted locally in SQLite.
• Encryption master keys are stored in the system keychain when available (with automatic SQLite fallback for headless/CI environments).
• Attachment uploads are local-first: entry write queues metadata and originals; sync uploads entry metadata first, then original binaries.
• Attachment constraints: max 500MB per file, with supported families image/video/audio/pdf.
• Linux installs include both standard and -no-embeddings platform packages for the matching architecture; the launcher picks based on glibc version (>= 2.38 prefers standard, otherwise it uses -no-embeddings). Compatibility -no-embeddings packages are built on Ubuntu 22.04 (glibc 2.35).

License

GNU GPL v3 (GPL-3.0-only). See LICENSE.