some thoughts should disappear.
you don't need every passing idea living in your notes forever. ephemeral saves the thought, then takes it back. a cli for scratch ideas that want a soft expiration. intrusive musings, debug observations, the "try this tomorrow" fragments that were never meant to be archived.
~ ephemeral ls just now · thought: use valkey instead of redis? 23h 54m · check if the bug is related to tz handling 12h 08m · reply to hn comment about transformers 2h 41m · try caching the prisma query overnight 3m 12s · maybe switch the deploy script to rsync… — swept 2 expired notes on load —
write it down. let it go.
$ ephemeral add "check if the bug is related to tz handling" → saved. gone in 24h. $ ephemeral add "reply to hn comment" --ttl 2h → saved. gone in 2h. $ ephemeral ls 23h 54m check if the bug is related to tz handling 1h 47m reply to hn comment 3m 12s maybe switch from redis to valkey? (expiring soon) $ ephemeral gc # runs auto on every call anyway swept 3 expired notes.
six-ish commands, nothing clever.
notes with a ttl
every note knows when it stops mattering. default is 24 hours, but you choose. no snooze, no renewal nag, the clock runs until it doesn't.
auto-gc, no cron
every command sweeps expired rows before it runs. no background daemons, no launchd, no systemd timers. the act of using it is the cleanup.
human-friendly ttls
--ttl 2h, 30m, 7d, 90s. write it the way you'd say it aloud. no iso durations, no cron expressions.
local sqlite, no cloud
one file at ~/.ephemeral/store.db. no account, no telemetry, no sync. if your laptop vanishes, so do the notes, which feels fitting.
plain text export
ephemeral export > notes.txt dumps everything still alive. an escape hatch for the moment you change your mind about letting go.
why would you want your notes to disappear?
second-brain apps become archaeological digs. a folder labelled ideas-2023 nobody opens. a checklist of articles to read, each entry older than the last time you thought about it. every thought you save is a thought you must someday clean, or carry around as quiet guilt.
some fragments don't deserve permanence. the 2am idea, the debug hunch that'll either pay off by sunrise or be wrong forever, the "reply to that dm later" that was stale the moment you wrote it. write it so it stops looping in your head, then let the timer forget it for you.
not public yet.
source drops on github soon, i'm still finishing the repo. python 3.9+, macos or linux when it ships. email bennett@frkhd.com if you want a preview.