Journal.Today is a small personal journaling app built for one user: yourself.

I originally explored TinyMCE for another project and decided to use it to build something deliberately simple—a place to write daily thoughts without distractions. The app is self-hostable by design and does not try to be a full-fledged journaling platform.

You write entries for the day. That’s it. There’s no history view yet, intentionally. The only feedback loop is a writing streak.

Authentication is intentionally minimal: a single username and password stored via environment variables. This is not meant for multiple users or public hosting.

Setup

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone git@github.com:ABA-aadarsh/journal.today.git

2. Get a free TinyMCE API key
   Follow this guide: Set up TinyMCE API in 2 Minutes

3. Create a free MongoDB cluster
   Follow this Guide: Create Mongodb Database

4. Create a .env file:

   NEXT_PUBLIC_TINY_MCE_API_KEY=""
   JWT_SECRET=""
   USER=""
   PASSWORD=""
   DATABASE_URI=""

5. Deploy
   Vercel is the simplest option for this project.