cogitus 0.8.0

A fast, searchable terminal workspace for capturing and evolving programming ideas.

Cogitus

[!NOTE]

Cogitus is currently in beta. Core workflows are available, and interfaces may continue to evolve in subsequent releases.

Cogitus — a fast, searchable terminal workspace for capturing and evolving programming ideas.

Cogitus is a Python-based TUI (Terminal User Interface) built with Textual. It is designed specifically for developers who want a structured, keyboard-driven way to capture, explore, and refine programming ideas without leaving the terminal. This is not a generic note-taking app and not a task manager. Cogitus is focused on structured idea capture, iteration, and discovery.

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Goals

• Fast, local-first idea capture
• Fully keyboard-driven workflow
• Searchable and structured storage
• Minimal, distraction-free UI
• Designed specifically for programming and technical concepts

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Core Concepts

Cogitus treats ideas as structured entities rather than loose notes. Each idea can include:

• Title
• Body/description (Markdown-friendly text - edit in markdown, display rendered using Textual/Rich native functionality)
• Tags
• Group (ideas are organized under groups in the left tree view)
• Timestamps (created/updated)

Future versions may introduce:

• Idea linking (relationships between ideas)
• Graph views
• Scoring or priority signals
• AI-assisted idea expansion

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Architecture

• UI: Built with Textual
• Database: SQLite (local file, WAL mode)
• Data Access: sqliter-py
• Package Management: uv (not pip)

The project intentionally separates:

• Textual UI layer (screens and widgets)
• Repository/service layer for database access
• Schema and migration management

Cogitus is also a real-world validation project for sqliter-py.

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Current Functionality

Functionality available in the current release:

• Create, edit, rename, and delete ideas
• Organize ideas in groups, including create/rename/delete flows and bulk reassignment on group delete
• Browse ideas in a grouped tree view
• Tag ideas
• Advanced search with SQLite FTS5 text search plus inline operators (tag:, group:, and, or)
• Rendered Markdown detail view with tags and timestamps
• Copy & Paste support
• CLI commands for scripting (list, export, delete)

[!NOTE]

items in bold are in the current HEAD but not yet in the pypi release. They will be included in the next release, but you can always install from the repo to get the latest features.

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Target Users

• Solo developers
• Indie hackers
• Open-source maintainers
• Engineers who think in terminals

If you sketch ideas in README files, TODO lists, or scattered Markdown files across projects, Cogitus aims to centralize that thinking into a structured, searchable workspace.

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Installation

The recommended way to install this is as a global tool, either using uv (best) or pipx:

uv tool install cogitus

You can always install globally using pip if you don't want to use any of those 2 tools:

pip install cogitus

Usage

cogitus

Key Shortcuts (Main Screen)

• n: New idea
• e: Edit selected idea
• r: Rename selected idea or group
• d: Delete selected idea
• g: New group
• Shift+G: Delete selected group
• /: Focus search
• y: Copy selected idea body
• ?: Show help
• q: Quit

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Clipboard Support

Cogitus uses two clipboard strategies for maximum compatibility:

• OSC 52 (primary) — works in most modern terminals (Ghostty, iTerm2, Kitty, Alacritty, WezTerm, Windows Terminal) and through tmux/SSH
• pyperclip (fallback) — uses system tools like xclip, xsel, or pbcopy for terminals that don't support OSC 52 (e.g. Gnome Terminal, macOS Terminal)

tmux users: You need set-clipboard enabled in your ~/.tmux.conf for OSC 52 to pass through:

set -g set-clipboard on

Linux users without OSC 52 support: Install xclip or xsel for the pyperclip fallback to work:

sudo apt-get install xclip   # Debian/Ubuntu
sudo pacman -S xclip          # Arch
sudo dnf install xclip        # Fedora

y copy is context-sensitive: In the editor, y copies the current selection. In rendered Markdown view, y copies selected text when detected; otherwise it copies the full idea body. In some terminals/cases, Textual may not detect rendered-view selection and will fall back to full-body copy.

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Development

This project uses:

• uv for dependency and environment management
• SQLite for local storage
• Textual for UI
• Standard formatting and linting tools defined in the repository

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License

Cogitus is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE.txt.