nb (nota bene) is a tool for recording data over time. what sets nb apart is that:
- it's a scrappy, easy to use CLI that gracefully scales to automated workflows
- it's opinionated about use cases and provides "recipes" for them
why did i write nb? in my head, all tasks that take longer than one sitting take the same amount of time to complete: infinite. if i'm to do a task that is large, i need to be able to see progress. this is particularly hard for tasks where your work is routinely being undone.
nb is concerned with several types of things. the first is a stream. streams are containers for different types of data. one stream might contain the number of unread emails in your inbox, another might contain the number of pages you've written in a day, etc.
streams are built of notes. a note is a thruple in the format (index, timestamp, value), and is a record of some thing at some time. most notes will be numbers; do not be concerned by this. they are called notes because you note them, not because they are long-form text.
start by identifying something you think might be useful to measure. measure it a few times, recording these measurements with nb in a stream. if you find yourself referring back to the measurements, automate gathering them. if you do not, delete the stream; nb is a tool for collecting data that helps you do some thing.
if you have a goal on something easily measured, consider this recipe. make a stream for the task, and measure and note its value any time you think about it or make progress towards it.
data is stored locally in a flat json database; by default, it's named database.db. if you would like to sync it, use the tool of your choice. the author recommends syncthing.