Jira knows what you shipped. Your PRs know what you changed. Neither knows why you chose it, what you were worried about, or what you were trying to become — the part your review and your next interview actually run on.

Paper is where that goes. Write a line a day in the terminal you already have open; get standup notes tomorrow morning and a coach that knows your work.

Install

npm install -g @rewrlution/paper-cli
paper              # answer four questions, write your first entry

Journaling is free and works offline forever — no account, no API key, nothing to configure. The AI features (follow-ups, recap, coach) run on Paper's servers:

paper auth register     # 14 days free, no card

You never supply an API key. Model access comes with your account.

Commands

Write

paper              # guided entry — AI asks 2-3 follow-up questions, then saves
paper add          # open $EDITOR, save
paper edit         # reopen today's entry
paper log "..."    # quick one-liner append
paper show         # read today's (or any) entry
paper list         # browse past entries, open one
paper stats        # streak, word count, the heatmap

Review

paper recap                        # last 7 days as standup notes, copied to your clipboard
paper recap --since monday         # from last Monday
paper recap --since yesterday      # yesterday only — the daily standup
paper recap --days 14              # any window

Recap is ephemeral: it drafts notes you paste and throw away, and never writes to your career record.

Career

paper career           # what Paper knows about you, and which journals say so
paper career import    # read an old resume or LinkedIn export into your history
paper career refresh   # fold new journals in — proposes wins, you confirm each one
paper career edit      # fix anything by hand — roles, dates, bullets, contact
paper coach            # coaching conversation — knows your career and your goal
paper coach history    # reopen a past conversation — read it, or keep talking

Resumes

paper resume                   # browse every resume you've written, newest first
paper resume new               # a resume from everything Paper knows
paper resume new --for <link>  # a one-pager aimed at that job posting
paper resume edit              # reopen one to polish it, and re-render its PDF

Your career record is the master; a resume is a render of it. Anything true about you is paper career; anything you send someone is paper resume.

Account & sync (optional)

paper auth register   # create a Paper account — 14 days free, no card
paper auth login      # log in on another device
paper auth status     # who you are, and what your plan allows
paper sync            # push journals + profile up, pull other devices down
paper subscribe       # move to a paid plan when the trial ends
paper auth logout

Setup

paper import <folder>             # bring in existing notes as journals (see below)
paper config set editor nvim
paper setup                       # re-run onboarding

How it works

You write daily. paper recap drafts standup notes from a window of entries and copies them to your clipboard — ephemeral, nothing is kept. paper career refresh is the durable path: it reads new journals, proposes wins, and folds in only the ones you confirm. Confirmed wins live in career.json, each citing the journals it came from.

paper coach reads that record, so a session opens already knowing your goal and your recent work. Corrections you make during review ("gyroscope is part of code-video, not its own project") are saved to the record's notes, so every future output gets them right — without re-asking.

Storage: plain-text files under your OS data directory (~/Library/Application Support/paper on macOS, ~/.local/share/paper on Linux):

| File | What it is | |---|---| | journals/YYYYMMDD.md | your words — immutable, never edited by AI | | bio.json | your level, company, and goal — the four things paper setup asks | | career.json | what Paper learned about you, and which journals say so (you confirm it) | | resumes/<job>-<when>/v<N>.{md,pdf} | every resume, and every version of it — nothing is overwritten | | coach/<ulid>.jsonl | saved coach conversations, appended as you talk |

Importing existing notes

Already have a folder of daily notes — from Obsidian, another journaling app, or just markdown files you've kept yourself? Point paper import at it and each file becomes a journal entry.

Always start with --dry-run. It writes nothing and shows you exactly what would be imported:

paper import <your-path-to-notes> --dry-run

Run the same command without --dry-run when the list looks right.

Which files get picked up

your-notes-folder/           ← the folder you point paper at
├── 20260701.md              ✓ imported as July 1
├── 2026-07-02.md            ✓ imported as July 2
├── 2026-07-03.txt           ✓ .txt works too
├── monday.md                ✓ imported — but dated by when you last
│                              edited the file, not by its name
├── ideas.md                 ✓ same — every .md and .txt comes along
├── empty.md                 ✗ skipped, nothing in it
├── screenshot.png           ✗ skipped, only .md and .txt are read
├── notes.pdf                ✗ skipped
└── archive/                 ✗ skipped — subfolders are never opened
    └── 20250104.md          ✗ not imported

How paper dates each entry

It checks four things, in order, and uses the first one it finds:

1. 20260727 at the start of the filename
2. 2026-07-27 at the start of the filename
3. A date: field in the file's frontmatter
4. The file's last-modified time

That last rule is a catch-all: a file with no date anywhere still gets imported, filed under whenever you last edited it. So point paper at the folder that actually holds your entries — a whole notes vault will bring everything along. The dry run shows you before a single file is written.

If a date already exists

Paper stops and asks before touching anything. You can skip those days, append the imported text below what's already there, or overwrite. Decide up front with --on-conflict skip, append, or overwrite.

Wiki-links ([[like this]]) come through as plain text — nothing breaks, but they won't resolve. Embedded images and attachments aren't copied.

Sync (multi-device)

Write it once, have it everywhere. Journals, profile, and coach conversations follow you to every machine you log in from — so a new device already knows who you are, and Paper never asks you the same question twice.

paper auth register   # or `paper auth login` on the second machine
paper sync

That's it — sync runs against Paper's hosted API, and there's nothing to configure. Synced content is encrypted at rest.

Support

Stuck, hit a bug, or need your plan changed by hand? Email [email protected].