Casey

A calm, focused productivity app for daily journaling, lightweight task management, and idea resurfacing. Built with Flask and SQLite.

Named after Casey Newton, whose productivity approach on the Hard Fork podcast inspired this tool.

Screenshots

Features

• Daily Journaling: One entry per day with autosave, Markdown support, mood tracking, and tagging
• Journal Templates: Customizable writing prompts (Morning Pages, Weekly Review, Daily Standup, Brain Dump) to get you started
• Task Management: Due dates, priorities, subtasks, recurrence (daily/weekly/monthly), and completion history
• Blips: Capture quick thoughts that randomly resurface each day using weighted spaced repetition, keeping good ideas alive
• Calendar View: Monthly mood visualization with writing streak tracking
• Full-Text Search: Search across journal entries, tasks, and blips
• Dark Mode: Automatic theme detection with manual toggle
• Multi-User: User registration, authentication, and per-user data isolation
• Two-Factor Auth: TOTP-based 2FA with QR code setup
• API Access: Personal API tokens with full REST endpoints for journal, tasks, and blips
• Import/Export: JSON and CSV export, JSON import for backups and migration
• Admin Panel: User management, audit logging, and usage statistics
• Docker Ready: Single-container deployment with Gunicorn

How It Works

The blips system is the key differentiator. Unlike traditional note-taking where ideas get buried, Casey randomly surfaces old thoughts alongside your daily journal. The surfacing algorithm weights blips so that less-seen and older ideas come up more often, while pinned blips get a boost. This creates serendipitous connections and ensures good ideas don't die in your archive.

Daily workflow:

1. Open Casey in the morning
2. See a few random blips from your backlog
3. Journal freely (blips spark new connections)
4. Add tasks as they come up
5. Capture new blips throughout the day

Installation

Quick Start with Docker

# Create a directory for Casey
mkdir casey && cd casey

# Download docker-compose.yml
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dannymcc/casey/master/docker-compose.yml

# Create your environment file
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env and set a strong SECRET_KEY

# Start the container
docker compose up -d

Or run directly:

docker run -d \
  --name casey \
  -p 5090:5090 \
  -v casey-data:/app/data \
  -e SECRET_KEY=your-secret-key \
  ghcr.io/dannymcc/casey:latest

Access the application at http://localhost:5090

The first registered user is automatically promoted to admin.

Manual Installation

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/dannymcc/casey.git
cd casey

# Create virtual environment
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

# Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Run
python app.py

Visit http://localhost:5090

Configuration

Copy .env.example to .env and configure:

Variable	Description	Default
SECRET_KEY	Session encryption key	Required
FLASK_DEBUG	Enable debug mode	False
VERSION	App version display	dev

API

Casey includes a REST API for automation and integrations. Generate a personal API token in Settings > API.

# List journal entries
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer your_api_token" \
  http://localhost:5090/api/journal

# Create a journal entry
curl -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer your_api_token" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"date": "2026-02-10", "content": "Hello from the API"}' \
  http://localhost:5090/api/journal/2026-02-10

Available Endpoints

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	/api/journal	List journal entries
GET/POST	/api/journal/<date>	Get or create/update entry by date
GET/POST	/api/tasks	List or create tasks
GET/PUT/DELETE	/api/tasks/<id>	Get, update, or delete a task
GET/POST	/api/blips	List or create blips
GET/DELETE	/api/blips/<id>	Get or delete a blip

Data Backup

Your data lives in a single SQLite file at data/casey.db inside the container volume.

Using the built-in export:

• Go to Settings > Data > Export to download a full JSON or CSV backup

Manual backup:

docker cp casey:/app/data/casey.db ./backup-$(date +%Y-%m-%d).db

Tech Stack

• Backend: Python 3.11 / Flask
• Database: SQLite with FTS5 full-text search
• Frontend: Vanilla HTML/CSS/JS (no framework)
• Fonts: DM Sans, JetBrains Mono (Google Fonts)
• Server: Gunicorn
• Auth: Flask-WTF CSRF, bcrypt passwords, TOTP 2FA
• Rate Limiting: Flask-Limiter

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

Development Setup

1. Clone this repository
2. Create a virtual environment: python3 -m venv venv
3. Activate it: source venv/bin/activate
4. Install dependencies: pip install -r requirements.txt
5. Run in development mode: python app.py

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Support

• Issues: GitHub Issues

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Made by Danny McClelland