Daily Notes

The daily note is the heartbeat of Time Garden. Every other layer is built from these.

A new daily note is created automatically when you open the vault — its title is today's date in YYYY-MM-DD format (e.g. 2026-04-27), and it lives inside 01 Daily/[year]/[month]/.

Anatomy of a Daily Note

Every daily note is structured the same way, top to bottom:

1. Banner

A rotating, day-themed image at the very top. Mondays look different from Saturdays. The banner fades into the page so it doesn't fight your text. (See Changing the Banners to swap them.)

2. Title

The full date, written out like "Monday, April 27, 2026". Generated from the file name automatically.

3. The Navbar

A row of clickable shortcuts: previous day, this week, this month, next day, etc. Designed so you never have to use the file explorer to navigate your journal.

4. The Alias

A one-line input where you (or the AI) name the day. "First day at the new job", "Long walk + read in the park", "Felt off all afternoon". This becomes how the day is labeled everywhere else in your journal.

5. The Body

A blank - bullet point waiting for your cursor. Write whatever you want — paragraphs, bullets, headers, embedded videos. This is the actual journal entry.

6. AI Action Buttons

A pair of buttons:

• AI Rate + Alias — analyzes what you wrote and fills in a rating + alias automatically
• (Plus the per-feature buttons in Time Garden Eternal)

Skip these entirely if you don't have Eternal set up — you can always rate and alias by hand.

7. 📁 Pictures

Drag any image into this section and it gets:

• Embedded here, with rounded corners and a soft border
• Auto-collected by your weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly galleries

You don't ever manually copy pictures upward.

8. The Rating Slider

A drag-bar from 1 to 10. Sets the dayRating for the day, which feeds:

• The week's bar chart
• The month's trend line
• The quarter's progression
• The year's overview chart
• The "top days" tables on weekly/yearly notes

9. ⚡︎ Quick Notes — Highlights / Ideas / Progress

Three buttons that drop tagged bullet points into your note. These flow up into aggregated logs on every higher layer.

10. Year Throwback

If you have past years' entries on the same date, they appear here automatically — "What you wrote on April 27 last year." A quiet little time machine.

11. Q&A

A question box. Ask anything about your day, and the local AI answers using only your daily entry as context.

Where Daily Notes Live

01 Daily/
├── 2025/
│   ├── 09-September/
│   ├── 10-October/
│   ├── 11-November/
│   └── 12-December/
└── 2026/
    └── 01-January/
        ├── 2026-01-01.md
        ├── 2026-01-02.md
        └── ...

Year folders. Month folders. Then the date files. Predictable, browsable, and supports any year going back or forward as far as you'd like.

How They Connect Upward

Every daily note has a hidden link at the top to its weekly note. That's how the Weekly Notes page knows which days belong to it. Similarly, weekly notes contain hidden links to their monthly notes, and so on up the chain.

You don't manage any of this. It's automatic from the filename.

Frequently Asked

What if I miss a day?

Nothing breaks. The week just has six days instead of seven. Charts adjust. Aggregations adjust. Don't backfill out of guilt — but you can if you want, just create the daily note manually with the right date.

Can I have more than one daily note per day?

No. Time Garden assumes one daily note per day. If you need a second "scratchpad" for the day, create it inside 07 Notes/ and link to it from your daily.

What if I journal across midnight?

Use whichever date feels right to you. Most people stay on the date they started writing, even past midnight.

Up Next

• Weekly Notes — what your daily entries roll into
• The Rating System — the single most powerful number in your journal
• Quick Notes — Highlights, Ideas, Progress — the underrated tagging system