d3vlog 0.7.0

A tiny developer journal that lives in your terminal
d3vlog-0.7.0 is not a library.

Capture what you did, when you did it — without ever leaving the shell.

Contents

Why devlog?

Standups, retros, performance reviews, and "wait, what did I actually ship last Tuesday?" all want the same thing: a timestamped trail of your work. devlog gives you that with two commands and zero ceremony. It is local-first, has no network calls, and keeps everything in a single SQLite file you own.

$ devlog add "Refactored the store layer"
Added item "Refactored the store layer"!

That is the whole ritual. Type the note, hit enter, get back to work.

Features
📓 Frictionless capture One short command — devlog add "…" — and the thought is saved.
📜 Full history at a glance devlog list groups every entry by day, most recent day first.
✅ Track each entry's state Move items between in_progress, done, and cancelled with devlog set-status.
🗃️ Local-first SQLite Your journal lives in ~/.devlog/entries.sqlite. No cloud, no account.
🆔 Time-ordered UUID v7 IDs encode creation time, so entries sort naturally by when they happened.
🕓 Honest timestamps Stored in UTC (RFC 3339), shown in your local time when you list.
🦀 One small binary SQLite is bundled at build time — nothing to install alongside it.
🔒 Quiet by design No telemetry, no background process, no network.

Install

From crates.io

cargo install d3vlog --locked

The crate is published as d3vlog, but it installs a binary named devlog.

From source

git clone https://github.com/w3lt/devlog
cd devlog
cargo install --path .

Requirements: a Rust toolchain new enough for the 2024 edition (Rust 1.85+) and a C compiler — rusqlite compiles a bundled copy of SQLite, so you do not need SQLite installed on your system.

Usage

$ devlog --help
A tiny developer journal for the terminal

Usage: devlog <COMMAND>

Commands:
  add         Add a new journal entry
  list        List journal entries
  set-status  Set status of entry
  help        Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

Options:
  -h, --help     Print help
  -V, --version  Print version
Command What it does Example
devlog add <message> Append a new entry, stamped with the current UTC time. devlog add "Cut the v0.2 release"
devlog list Print every entry, grouped by day (newest day first). devlog list
devlog set-status <id> <status> Set an entry's status to in_progress, done, or cancelled. devlog set-status <id> done
devlog --version Show the installed version. devlog --version
devlog --help Show help (works on subcommands too). devlog add --help

A typical session

$ devlog add "Ship the new auth flow"
Added item "Ship the new auth flow"!

$ devlog add "Fix flaky test in store.rs"
Added item "Fix flaky test in store.rs"!

$ devlog list
Wednesday, 2026-06-24 · 2 entries

  [~] 09:14  Ship the new auth flow
      id: 019efa5e-5f23-70b3-b4d3-f5f1643764a3

  [~] 11:02  Fix flaky test in store.rs
      id: 019efa5e-5f2a-7eb0-9ed7-9980495715a5

$ devlog set-status 019efa5e-5f23-70b3-b4d3-f5f1643764a3 done
Set status of item 019efa5e-5f23-70b3-b4d3-f5f1643764a3 to be Done

$ devlog list
Wednesday, 2026-06-24 · 2 entries

  [✓] 09:14  Ship the new auth flow
      id: 019efa5e-5f23-70b3-b4d3-f5f1643764a3

  [~] 11:02  Fix flaky test in store.rs
      id: 019efa5e-5f2a-7eb0-9ed7-9980495715a5

Entries are grouped under a day header — <weekday>, <YYYY-MM-DD> · <count> — with the most recent day first. Within a day, each entry shows a status marker, its local HH:MM time, and the message, followed by the full UUID on an indented id: line:

  • [~] — in progress (the state every new entry starts in)
  • [✓] — done
  • [x] — cancelled

Move an entry between states with devlog set-status <id> <status>, passing the full id from the list output and one of in_progress, done, or cancelled.

How your data is stored

Everything lives in one SQLite database, created on first run:

~/.devlog/entries.sqlite

The schema is a single table:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS devlog_entries (
    id          TEXT PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
    created_at  TEXT NOT NULL CHECK (datetime(created_at) IS NOT NULL),
    message     TEXT NOT NULL CHECK (length(trim(message)) > 0),
    status      TEXT NOT NULL DEFAULT 'in_progress'
                CHECK (status IN ('in_progress', 'done', 'cancelled'))
);
Column Type Notes
id TEXT UUID v7 — time-ordered, generated per entry.
created_at TEXT UTC timestamp in RFC 3339; the CHECK rejects anything SQLite can't parse as a datetime.
message TEXT The note. Must be non-empty after trimming whitespace.
status TEXT Lifecycle state — one of in_progress (the default for new entries), done, or cancelled.

The schema is versioned (via SQLite's PRAGMA user_version), so existing journals are migrated in place when you upgrade devlog — the status column was added this way.

Because it is plain SQLite, you can always inspect or back up your journal with ordinary tools:

sqlite3 ~/.devlog/entries.sqlite "SELECT created_at, status, message FROM devlog_entries;"

Project layout

devlog/
├── Cargo.toml          # crate: d3vlog · binary: devlog
└── src/
    ├── main.rs         # entry point — parse args, dispatch commands
    ├── cli.rs          # clap definitions for `add`, `list`, and `set-status`
    ├── store.rs        # SQLite connection, schema migrations, reads & writes
    ├── data.rs         # data module root
    └── data/
        ├── entry.rs    # DevLogEntry model + display formatting
        └── status.rs   # DevLogEntryStatus enum + parsing & rendering

The dependencies are intentionally few:

  • clap — argument parsing (derive API)
  • rusqlite — SQLite access (bundled)
  • chrono — UTC timestamps
  • uuid — UUID v7 identifiers

Building from source

# Run without installing
cargo run -- add "Trying devlog from a checkout"
cargo run -- list

# Optimized build
cargo build --release   # binary at target/release/devlog

Roadmap

Ideas under consideration — not yet implemented:

  • devlog search <term> — filter entries by text
  • devlog rm / devlog edit — remove or amend entries
  • Date filters (--since, --today, --week)
  • Tags / projects per entry
  • Export to Markdown or JSON
  • A scrollable TUI view

Have a different itch? Open an issue.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome.

git clone https://github.com/w3lt/devlog
cd devlog
cargo build
cargo run -- list

Please keep changes small and focused, and run cargo fmt and cargo clippy before opening a PR.

License

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENSE or https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 for the full text.