Vaults

One notebook per project, solo or shared through a synced folder, with Today spanning all of them.

A vault is one project’s notes: its journal, pages, tasks and history. You have a home vault (personal, in ~/thought), and you can make one per project, solo or shared with a team through a synced folder.

$ thc vault                 # which vault you're in, and why
$ thc vault ls              # every vault on this machine, with open and inbox counts
$ thc vault new acme        # a new vault in ~/thought-vaults/acme
$ thc vault new acme ~/Dropbox/acme/thought   # one you'll share
$ thc vault add <folder>    # join a vault someone shared with you
$ thc vault use acme        # make it current on this machine
$ thc vault use personal    # back home
$ thc vault info            # path, sync, counts
$ thc vault rename side sidequest
$ thc vault rm side         # unregisters it; never deletes anything

A vault is a folder. Each device writes only its own log files inside it, so Dropbox, iCloud or Syncthing never see two writers on one file, and you never get “conflicted copies”.

Which vault a command uses

First match wins:

1. --vault <name> on the command
2. THC_VAULT in the environment
3. a .thc.toml in the current folder or a parent (vault = "acme")
4. thc vault use
5. home

So inside ~/code/acme with a .thc.toml, every thc command, and every agent you run there, uses acme on its own. thc vault tells you which rule picked it.

You always see where you are. Outside your home vault, listings start with a line like vault acme · 7 open · thc vault use personal.

Colours and names

Each vault has a colour. Home is ember; a new vault gets the next of rose, sea, iris and graphite. The TUI’s header shows the vault’s name in its colour ([•] acme), and the cursor row, the active tab and the caret wear it too. In a 16-colour terminal the name is a reversed chip instead. A long name is shortened in the header; set your own short one in the vault’s settings.toml:

[vault]
name_short = "tcrl"   # 12 characters at most

Settings that travel with the vault

A vault can carry settings in settings.toml in its folder. They sync with it, so a team shares them, and they change only what they set. A vault can set how thc looks and feels ([tui], [tui.focus], [keys.*], [theme]), never what runs or what’s trusted: those lines are ignored with a note. To opt out of one for yourself, put your own value under [vaults.acme.settings] in your config.

Where captures land. By default, thc add writes to today’s journal. A vault can send captures to a page instead:

[capture]
target = "¶ Issues"

That covers thc add, todo and remind, and the capture box. Naming a place (--journal today, --under <id>) still wins.

$ thc config --effective            # every setting in effect, and where it came from
$ thc config --why tui.focus.preset # each layer that sets one key

Switching in the TUI

V (or space g v) opens the picker: every vault with its open and inbox counts. Enter switches this session, saving first, and n makes a new vault. The palette (:) has vault: acme too. Outside home, a page’s crumb starts with the vault (acme › ¶ Pages › Health).

Asking across vaults

Add vault: to any query:

$ thc q 'vault:* status:open sort:due'            # every vault
$ thc q 'vault:(acme or personal) #offsite'       # two of them
$ thc q 'vault:* -vault:side status:open'         # all but one
$ thc q 'vault:* status:open group:vault'         # a section per vault

When the answer comes from more than one vault, each row says which (acme · due fri). An id from another vault works anywhere: thc done acme/k7q2m.

Today is about you

Today and Agenda show every vault: thc today, thc agenda and the TUI’s Today. A row from another vault starts its meta with that vault’s name, in its colour. Anything you do to it (x, d, a tag) happens in its own vault, and u undoes it there. Enter on such a row takes you into its vault while it’s open, and Esc brings you back. space t v shows a section per vault. Capture (a) goes to the vault in the header.

Agents see only their own vault. One running in ~/code/acme reads and writes acme, and writes elsewhere only when you ask (--vault <name>).

Reminders from everywhere

The one background service serves every registered vault, so a reminder in acme reaches you like one at home, named: acme · Book the venue · due 17:00. A vault you add starts being served within half a minute.

Views that span vaults

A sectioned view can read several vaults with --scope:

$ thc view copy today acme-today
$ thc view set acme-today --scope vault:acme

A view that spans vaults is kept in your home vault. One that reads a single vault is kept in that vault, where everyone who has it sees it.