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Beta Feature: Journal is currently in limited beta and requires an access code to unlock. Enter your access code in the app to enable this feature.

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Overview

Dayflow’s Journal feature helps you stay intentional about your days by combining manual reflection with AI-generated insights from your timeline. It’s designed to be quick, lightweight, and integrated with your automatic timeline tracking.

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How It Works

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Morning: Set Intentions

Start your day by setting intentions — what you want to accomplish and focus on. Intentions form includes:
  • Today’s intentions (list): 2-5 key tasks or goals for the day
  • Notes for the day (optional): Context, reminders, or thoughts
  • Long-term goals (optional): Bigger-picture goals you’re working toward
Intentions are saved locally and can be edited throughout the day.
Goals are pre-filled from your most recent entry to help you maintain consistency across days.

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Evening: Reflect

At the end of your day (after 4 PM), Dayflow prompts you to reflect: Reflections form includes:
  • Evening reflections (freeform): How did the day go? What went well? What could improve?
Reflections are optional — you can skip them if you prefer to just review the AI summary.

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AI Summary Generation

Once you’ve set intentions or reflections (or both), Dayflow can generate an AI-powered summary of your day that combines:
  • Timeline activity: What you actually did (from automatic tracking)
  • Your intentions: What you planned to do
  • Your reflections: How you felt about the day
  • Recent summaries: Context from previous days to ensure variety
The summary includes:
  • Wins: 2-3 key accomplishments
  • Narrative: 3-5 sentence arc of your day (morning, afternoon, evening)
  • To improve: 1 honest observation about what could’ve gone better
Summaries require at least 1 hour of timeline activity to generate. If you don’t have enough activity tracked, the summary button will be disabled.

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Weekly View

The Journal includes a weekly calendar view where you can:
  • See which days have journal entries
  • Navigate between days quickly
  • Spot patterns in your week (days with reflections vs. days without)

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Journal Flow States

The Journal UI adapts based on the time of day and what you’ve already completed:
StateWhen It AppearsWhat You See
IntroFirst visit, no entry yetCTA to set intentions
SummaryMorning, after recent activityYesterday’s summary + CTA to set today’s intentions
Intentions EditClicking “Set intentions”Form to enter intentions, notes, goals
Reflection PromptEvening (after 4 PM), intentions setPrompt to add reflections
Reflection EditClicking “Add reflections”Form to enter evening reflections
Board CompleteSummary generatedFull day view with all sections + AI summary
Typical morning flow:
  1. Open Journal → see yesterday’s summary (if available)
  2. Click “Set today’s intentions”
  3. Enter your intentions and goals
  4. Save → return to timeline

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4AM Boundary

Journal uses the same 4AM boundary as the timeline — meaning your “day” runs from 4AM to 3:59AM the next morning. This ensures late-night work sessions are grouped with the correct logical day. Example:
  • Work until 2 AM on Tuesday night → counts as Monday’s timeline
  • Wake up at 8 AM Tuesday → counts as Tuesday’s timeline

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AI Summary Details

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Summary Format

**Wins:** Shipped the journal feature I set out to finish. Made real progress on video animations.

The morning didn't have much direction—some scrolling, flight searches, a League video. Things clicked mid-afternoon when I got into **Swift animation work**, dialing in spring curves and reverse logic. Evening was a mix: Japan trip planning with friends, Duke interview prep, then back to **timeline card specs**. Ended the night playing with Opus 4.5.

**To improve:** Morning had too much drift. Would've felt better to batch distractions and start focused.

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Summary Prompt

Dayflow builds a detailed prompt that includes:
  • Timeline activity: All timeline cards for the day
  • Morning intentions: What you planned
  • Notes for the day: Additional context
  • Long-term goals: Bigger-picture context
  • Evening reflections: Your self-assessment
  • Recent summaries: Previous days’ summaries to ensure stylistic variety
The AI is instructed to:
  • Write in first person (from your perspective)
  • Be warm and reflective, not robotic
  • Use varied sentence structure and avoid repetitive openers
  • Include 1-3 bolded phrases to highlight key activities
  • Not infer emotions unless you explicitly stated them
Recent summaries are included to prevent the AI from reusing the same phrases or sentence structures — keeping your journal fresh.

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Scheduled Reminders

Dayflow can send notifications to remind you to:
  • Set intentions in the morning
  • Add reflections in the evening
Configure reminders in Settings → Notifications.
Reminders are local notifications — no external services are used.

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Privacy & Data Storage

All journal data is stored locally in your Dayflow database:
  • Location: ~/Library/Application Support/Dayflow/chunks.sqlite
  • No cloud sync: Journal entries never leave your Mac unless you export them
  • AI processing: Summaries are generated using your configured AI provider (Gemini, Local, or ChatGPT/Claude)
Journal entries are never sent to analytics. Only metadata (character counts, not content) is tracked.

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Beta Access

The Journal feature is currently in limited beta and requires an access code. How to get access:
  1. Request an access code from the Dayflow team
  2. Open Dayflow → Settings → Journal
  3. Enter your access code
  4. The Journal tab will appear in the main UI
Beta access helps us refine the feature before a wider release. Feedback is welcome!

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Use Cases

Generate a summary at the end of the day, copy it, and use it as your standup update the next morning.
Use the weekly view to review patterns:
  • Which days did you hit your intentions?
  • When did you feel most productive?
  • What themes emerge across the week?
Set intentions in the morning, then reflect in the evening on whether you followed through. The AI summary provides objective data on what you actually did.
Track long-term goals across weeks. The goals field pre-fills from your most recent entry, making it easy to maintain consistency.

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Troubleshooting

The summary button requires at least 1 hour of timeline activity for the day. Ensure:
  1. Recording is enabled
  2. You have at least 1 hour of captured activity
  3. Timeline cards have been generated (check the Timeline view)
If summary generation fails:
  1. Check your AI provider configuration in Settings → AI Provider
  2. Verify your API key or CLI tool is working
  3. Ensure you have internet connectivity (for Gemini or ChatGPT/Claude)
  4. Try again — transient API errors can occur
Goals are pre-filled from your most recent journal entry. If you don’t have a previous entry, the field will be empty.
The Journal feature requires a beta access code. Enter your code in Settings → Journal to unlock the feature.

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Next Steps

Timeline

Learn how automatic timeline tracking works

AI Providers

Choose the right AI provider for summaries

Export

Export journal entries and timeline as Markdown

Privacy

Understand how your data is handled

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