daily-thoughts

Write a message to your Telegram bot, or on the page itself; it shows up on your page.

Telegram POSTs each message to a Next.js route, which stores it in Postgres. The main page reads Postgres. No cron, no polling, no background process.

Setup

1. Create a bot with @BotFather and copy the token.

2. Message the bot once, then open https://api.telegram.org/bot<TOKEN>/getUpdates to find your chat.id.

3. Create a Postgres database (Neon, Supabase, or local).

4. Copy .env.example to .env and fill it in. Generate the webhook secret with openssl rand -hex 32.

5. Install and initialise:

   npm install
   npm run db:init
   

Running locally

npm run dev

Telegram cannot reach localhost, so to exercise the webhook locally either expose the port (ngrok http 3000) and point the webhook at that URL, or POST an update yourself:

curl -X POST localhost:3000/api/telegram/webhook \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -H "x-telegram-bot-api-secret-token: $TELEGRAM_WEBHOOK_SECRET" \
  -d '{"message":{"message_id":1,"date":1757000000,"text":"hello","chat":{"id":YOUR_CHAT_ID}}}'

Replace YOUR_CHAT_ID with the numeric id from step 2. Left as-is the body is invalid JSON, and the handler answers 200 without storing anything — every ignore path returns 200 so that Telegram stops retrying, so a 200 here is not by itself proof the message landed.

Deploying

Deploy to Vercel, set the four required environment variables in the project settings, then register the webhook against the deployed URL:

npm run webhook:set -- https://your-app.vercel.app

When upgrading an existing deployment, run npm run db:init against the production DATABASE_URL before deploying the new code. It's idempotent, and the old code keeps working on the new schema. The reverse order breaks: new code on the old schema silently drops incoming Telegram messages.

Writing and deleting from the page

Set ADMIN_SECRET (e.g. openssl rand -hex 32), then visit /admin?key=<ADMIN_SECRET> once in your browser. That sets a cookie, and with it a New thought button appears in the header (or press n) and a delete button on each cloud. Entries written on the page are stored alongside Telegram ones and labelled "via web". Deleting removes the row from Postgres permanently. Without the cookie the page stays read-only; with ADMIN_SECRET unset, both are off entirely. Rotating the secret signs out every browser.

Daily check-in

Each day is a page: that day's thoughts float as clouds in a "sky", and, when you're logged in as admin, its check-in sits below as post-its on a "board". Move between days with the tear-off calendar (top right on desktop; its calendar button opens the month), the timeline dock at the bottom on phones, ←/→ or a sideways swipe. t jumps to today. Today's post-its are blank notes you write on; "Stick it" (or ⌘/Ctrl+Enter) saves them, and you can edit until midnight Japan time (JST), after which they're read-only. Blank answers are skipped. Drag a note by its tape (desktop) to rearrange the board on any day. Pick one sticker for today to mark the mood; it shows on the calendar and the dock.

The calm · loud switch in the header swaps the loud Riso Pop look for the quieter Sage Morning one, which also goes dark when your system is in dark mode.

Manage the questions at /questions (the checklist icon in the header). You can add, reword, reorder and retire them. Each answer keeps a copy of the wording it was given, so rewording or retiring a question never changes past days. Check-ins are private: visitors see the calendar and thoughts, but not your answers, stickers, or which days had a check-in.

Categories

Every thought and check-in answer is sorted into categories by TypeSafe's Jev model, and shows the ones it fits as small tapes. An entry can fit several. Set TYPESAFE_API_KEY to turn it on. Without it, nothing is classified and the page works as before.

Manage the categories on /questions, below the questions. Adding or rewording a category sorts every entry again. An entry is classified just after it's saved, without slowing the save down. For older entries, and after editing categories, the Categories section shows how many are waiting, and Classify now handles them a batch at a time. Like check-ins, categories are private: visitors never see them.

Asking Claude about your data (MCP)

The app is also an MCP server at /mcp, so Claude (or any MCP app) can read your journal and answer questions about it. It has one read-only tool, get_data, which returns everything grouped by day: thoughts with their times, check-in questions (as worded that day) and answers, the day's sticker, and each entry's categories. It can be narrowed to a date range. Nothing can be written or deleted through it.

It needs ADMIN_SECRET. When an app connects, your browser opens a consent page showing where you'll be sent after allowing (e.g. claude.ai). Only allow if that matches the app you started from, and enter ADMIN_SECRET as the password. Rotating ADMIN_SECRET disconnects every app, along with every browser.

• claude.ai (also desktop and mobile): Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, URL https://your-app.vercel.app/mcp, then Connect.
• Claude Code: claude mcp add --transport http daily-thoughts https://your-app.vercel.app/mcp, then /mcp → daily-thoughts → authenticate.

Apps stay connected for 30 days after they're last used. The login is stateless OAuth with nothing stored, ported from small_wins: every client id, code and token is signed with a key derived from ADMIN_SECRET. Code is in src/lib/mcp/ and the src/app/mcp and src/app/oauth routes.

Tests

npm test

Configuration

Variable	Required	Purpose
DATABASE_URL	yes	Postgres connection string.
DATABASE_POOL_MAX	no	Connections each server instance may open. Defaults to 5, enough for a page's queries to run in parallel.
TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN	yes	Used by webhook:set.
TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID	yes	The only chat whose messages are stored. Must be numeric.
TELEGRAM_WEBHOOK_SECRET	yes	Verified on every webhook request.
ADMIN_SECRET	no	Enables writing and deleting from the page, and the MCP server. See Writing and deleting from the page and Asking Claude about your data.
TYPESAFE_API_KEY	no	Enables sorting entries into categories. See Categories. Server-side only.
All dates and times are in Japan time (Asia/Tokyo): where one day ends and
the next begins, the times on the page, and what the MCP server returns. It's
fixed in src/lib/days.ts.