hisa

Personal note-taking system with structured storage and optional encryption.

Model

One note per day:

YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD.dn

Properties:

• plain UTF-8 text
• filesystem is the index
• no database, no hidden state
• atomic writes

Encrypted note:

YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD.dn.gpg

via the GNU Privacy Guard.

Scope

Fits:

• terminal-based workflows
• grep-based retrieval
• long-lived plain text notes
• optional encryption

Not a fit:

• sync system
• GUI / rich text editor
• query engine or database

Variants

hisa

• system gpg
• no dependencies
• Unix-like systems

hisa_ashell

• iOS a-Shell mini
• PGPy (pure Python)
• no external binaries
• .asc key handling (no keyring)
• compatible encrypted format

Install

Debian

cd ~/Downloads && \
curl -L -o hisa-latest.deb https://codeberg.org/duras/hisa/releases/download/v0.6.0/hisa_0.6.0_all.deb && \
sudo dpkg -i hisa-latest.deb

Python

curl -L -o hisa.tar.gz https://codeberg.org/duras/hisa/archive/main.tar.gz && \
tar -xzf hisa.tar.gz && \
cd hisa-main && \
pip install .

Usage

hisa
hisa append "note"
hisa search term

Commands

open

hisa open
hisa open -1
hisa open 2026-04-17
hisa open -- +7

append

hisa append "text"
hisa append -d -1 "yesterday"
cat file | hisa append -

- = stdin

Encryption

hisa -c open
hisa -c append "secret"
hisa -c show

Notes:

• uses system gpg
• append is memory-only
• editor uses temp file

Search / tags

hisa search error
hisa search todo -i
hisa tags

• literal match (not regex)
• encrypted notes excluded

Listing

hisa list
hisa list -n 0
hisa stats

Order: filename (date), not mtime.

Export

hisa export ~/backup
hisa export ~/backup --encrypt

Creates archive; optional encryption avoids plaintext export.

Dates

YYYY-MM-DD  absolute
0           today
-1          yesterday
+7          future

Future dates are rejected.

Environment

Behavior

• one file per day
• plain + encrypted may coexist
• atomic writes
• no index layer

Exit codes

Limits

• encrypted notes not searchable
• depends on gpg

Docs

• man hisa
• https://codeberg.org/duras/hisa

License

ISC