Grug Logo

Grug Notes

A simple self-organizing tool for text.

changelog / Jan 12 
minimum viable implementation for block publishing
changelog / Jan 08 
bug fix where enter key wouldn't create a new line, was a regression from last week
changelog / Jan 06 
bug fix: title saving on new blocks fixed.
changelog / Jan 01 
started using cloudflare
changelog / Dec 31 
Changes to tab functionality. Now it shifts line to right with cursor anywhere. Similar to Obsidian instead of VS Code or Sublime Text. I couldn't think of an instance where you need to add four spaces in the middle of text.

Shift-tab works.

Initial deploy of a macro functionality. [] typed at beginning of a line will convert to a markdown checkbox.

Return key handles markdown checkboxes like they should now.

~~i think there is one regression, space key on mobile should tab. I’ll fix that tomorrow. ~~ *fixed 30 min later*

*30 min later* quickToggle regression fixed in ios/safari


Happy New Year!
changelog / Dec 30 
added support for markdown checkboxes. as of now, don't think i'm making it a default on the quick toggle buttons...
changelog / Dec 26 
bug fix -- occasional rendering error when toggling between editing and rendered state (ie clicking on and off a block)
changelog / Dec 25 
added smart wrapping and the indentation indicator (vertical gray lines) to code blocks 

added language header and copy button to code blocks!
changelog / Dec 24 
very basic support for code blocks implemented. Use three backticks. No code highlighting or anything fancy yet. Improvements coming. 

*later today* Code highlights via prism.js added. So nice lol.

*later later* Fixed resize issue where rendered code could overflow.
changelog / Dec 17 
another major optimization for voice activity detection. like 10x faster! In practice, this shaves off about 1/10th of a second on all voice transcriptions. :)
changelog / Dec 16 
voice activity detection redesigned -- should be much more reliable. less false negatives and false positives. This is a big big quality improvement.

finally tested on an android phone. Some fixes deployed last week. Lower nav bar was not showing at times...
changelog / Dec 15 
adjusted some formatting in the help page. Also made a toggle for pull to refresh, so you can't refresh accidentally while the help drawer is open on mobile.
changelog / Dec 13 
Significant improvements to audio and ai/edit features:
    Improved voice activity detection
    Using Gemini Flash 2.0 -- better in every way
    👉 Displays speech recognition, and spinner until it's done
    Alternations to the prompt for improved accuracy
    
👉 
Fireworks.ai added as a backup to Groq for transcription services.

Ask Grug (generative ai search) is faster, switched to Flash 1.5 from gpt4o-mini
changelog / Dec 10 
menu and audio button positioning regression (from a few days ago) fixed
changelog / Dec 08 
improvement in the reliability of ai/edit audio feature. Still hunting for bugs, but it's notably better.
changelog / Dec 07 
cursor handling added while audio recording. Basically, cursor position should be maintained while using audio.
changelog / Dec 04 
bug fix -- audio ai/edit on an empty or new unsaved block was broken
changelog / Nov 12 
initial prototype of audio lock feature for longer recordings and of diarization (meeting aka multispeaker transcription). Unfortunately not sure how to solve the problem of ios/pwa falling asleep!!! https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=254545
changelog / Nov 09 
Crazy speed improvement on speech to text. Switched speech to text transcription api to Groq Whisper-3-large. It falls back to OpenAI api (whisper 2) which should make everything a little more reliable with that redundancy. I tried whisper-3-large-turbo, and while faster, doesn't seem quite as accurate. 

Also added voice activity detection. Basically it should prevent the random hallucination or jibberish if you submit empty audio. VAD is shockingly tricky to get right. Not absolutely sure this is right. But testing live!
changelog / Nov 08 
regression fix from yesterday, affected new accounts for a few hours.

small changes to ai/edit feature. added spinning indicator.

Switched ai/edit feature to Gemini Flash model. It's just faster and seems on par with 3.5 haiku. Small bug fix in that feature too where html entities would sometimes get throw in.
changelog / Nov 06 
fixed help drawer -- it didn't scroll on desktop and sometimes it was needed.

some backend adjustments and refactoring to embeddings. Don't expect any visible changes from this. 

some very subtle improvements to search

voice ai/edit feature uses claude 3.5 haiku -- much improved!
changelog / Oct 21 
prompt settings button, clean up -- consistently use svg.
changelog / Oct 19 
added mouse over hovers to most all the links lol. after 2 years.
changelog / Oct 18 
added underscore style markdown parsing for bold and italic
changelog / Oct 15 
improved the fetching code for csrf. Basically send the request sooner, so there is much less chance of a csrf error.
changelog / Oct 12 
Adjusted amount of context llm gets for natural language dates prompt. Should be an improvement in accuracy.

fixed regression, prompt settings were mistakenly hidden in a quest for optimizing loading speed. :|
changelog / Oct 10 
some caching bugs -- too aggressive caching. Right click on entity to change type slightly more reliable, but not quite 100%.
changelog / Oct 06 
past and future sections removed from mobile screens. I never used it. More likely to use calendar to change days.

And slight adjustment on past/future layout (nothing notable, just hoping it fixes occasional layout bug).
changelog / Oct 05 
more prefetching on mouseovers and click on mouse down. FASTER woo

also fixed a bug where the page would sometimes scroll with the quick toggle button on a line.
changelog / Oct 04 
fixed a rendering bug on iOS when spaces would push to the next line. seriously this one was starting to drive me insane. I hope it's all fixed lol. I will never abandon the <textarea>!
changelog / Sep 29 
persistent prompt pages now work -- that is the block for today is copied from the previous day it was edited, the same way it does on the home page.

persistent prompts also no longer show up on any future day pages. That doesn't make sense.
changelog / Sep 28 
added ability to "add to home" for any prompt page. Each prompt page now has it's own manifest.json that allow for this.
changelog / Sep 25 
If you press and hold the little button to the left of the line, it'll do the same as ctrl-shift-return, ie strike through by default. Great for mobile.
changelog / Sep 24 
Minimum viable offline support. Edits are stored in local storage and cleared once synced.

Also added a very basic service worker that caches static files. Appears to load faster for those who ‘add to home’ and use on mobile.
changelog / Sep 08 
error fixed on similar block feature for empty blocks. Inconsequential, but feels good to make errors in the logs go away.
changelog / Sep 02 
removed any dependencies on gpt 3.5

duplicate backlinks where the context is identical are filtered to only show one -- on the home page at least.
changelog / Aug 26 
added title text to block settings button

polished the copy button a little more, added quick animation on click and cleaned up the code a little.
changelog / Aug 25 
minimum viable copy button added. need improvement, but seems to work.

moved save indicator and made it fade out
changelog / Aug 21 
stripe/subscription sync errors fixed

subscribe banner added back to free accounts. it went missing from a template upgrade regression a while back.

django 5 to 5.1 upgrade
changelog / Aug 20 
So stoked! There's been a nagging rendering error when a name or company was tagged within a url. Basically random occasions would cause crazy overlapping text during editing. Swapped anchor tag for span during edit mode. Cross our fingers, no more weirdness. It's interesting, chrome seems to treat anchor slightly different. Safari seems to do it better.
changelog / Aug 19 
slight adjustment and improvement to date tagging prompt.
changelog / Aug 18 
made some changes to how manifest.json is served -- now fully loaded into memory and served static, hopefully as efficiently as possible. I think it was causing a db hit and contributing to crashing during hacker news traffic.
changelog / Aug 17 
csrf error fixed when on prompt page and trying to adjust block title or block settings.

super big rewrite and expansion of help/docs page. Added to menu button on computer view as well, even though it's redundant with bottom left link.
changelog / Aug 14 
some huge fixes on roam import. More robust and hoping urls correctly load now after the import.
changelog / Aug 13 
login with google in one click -- instead of it previously going to another page to then click again. Nice quality of life improvement.
changelog / Aug 12 
bug fix for accounts with a username that started or ended with an underscore

significant fixes with roam research import tool. Handles conflicts and duplicates much better.

additional templates moved to jinja -- faster, but not much of a noticeable change.
changelog / Aug 11 
small layout adjustments. Better alignment of user name and audio input button.

small fix with caching. it would take a hard refresh for a block to disappear after you delete it. Now it properly clears the cache and it goes away.

small type error in frontend fixed. don't think it was causing any issues.
changelog / Aug 07 
removed unlinked blocks from datatype pages. it's not needed and saves a db query.
changelog / Aug 06 
beta of roam research json import feature added to menu
changelog / Aug 02 
tiny bugfix when archive is empty, error at endpoint for new accounts.
changelog / Jul 29 
fixed regression where 'today' could be tagged as a natural language dates since the recent update in date parsing. In general, backlinks should not be created to the day of the note.
changelog / Jul 27 
Front end bug fix, where sometimes audio buttons would be hidden on mobile after you press record.
changelog / Jul 24 
bug fix -- prompts would be missing older blocks due to template mistake.

bug fix -- doesn't wig out (scroll weirdly) trying to make a selection on mobile.
changelog / Jul 23 
fixed a couple javascript errors on landing page. 

switched person and company entity recognition to gpt4o-mini. search/ask is smarter! :)

some lines of code deleted that were causing ai attributes to not work, ie recognizing phone numbers on existing people wasn't reliable. Still needs work and testing.

slight adjustment to automatic date filtering in search/ask as it was sometimes falsely finding a date
changelog / Jul 08 
date handling has been gutted. And largely turned over to claude 3.5 Sonnet. Seems good so far. Still some optimizing to do, but not slower and seemingly much more reliable than the rule based methods. Previously it was a combo of chatgpt 3.5 and rule based methods. But it would fail a good number of tests and was a patchwork of if statements. And got quite slow. The new method looks for any date entities on the server, and if any are found, claude is called to intelligently decide the dates.
    let me know if it fails you! [email protected]
changelog / Jul 01 
currently experiencing openai api issues/rate limits. May break ai entity identification and search.
    fixed

The core ai functionality has been gutted. Date recognition is now entirely ruled based with some help from small natural language libraries to determine past or future dates. 
    many tests are good
        need more
    bad with holidays
    llm/chatgpt still responsible for tagging people and companies.
        could use additional testing
    still a lot of room for basic speed improvements

fixed funky scroll on mouse click bug
changelog / Jun 24 
templating issue fixed if you had a mention on your home page

grr. weird bug on persistent blocks going blank -- just refresh and it comes back, but annoying. will investigate tonight.
    fixed a server side error (I think this was it)
        update it is not!
            but i understand the problem a little more
            caused by polling an unsaved persistent block...
                gotta love sync problems
                    fixed (I think)

css adjustment for the buttons to the left of the lines. better on mobile, same on desktop.
changelog / Jun 23 
Some new front end code that helps with more natural scrolling and keeping the text within view -- both on computer and in ios. 

Typo fix on template.
changelog / Jun 22 
Finally switched to newer embedding model 'text-embedding-3-large' for search functionality. Seemingly better and faster search results already, but still needs tuning.
    fixed ai breakage on new accounts caused by this ~12 hrs later

New templating backend deployed. No visible changes, but slight speed improvement, especially for more complex or long pages.
changelog / Jun 19 
small bug fix in find/create prompt search. It was broken if the prompt was set to 'generate_today' but not show on this day... if that makes sense. Also now, when a block is already existing on the day, it correctly sets focus to that block. 

small bug fix -- html properly escaped on archived blocks (anything older displayed as plain text for rendering speed)
changelog / Jun 17 
Search and similar prompts features fixed from the Pinecone vector database issues.
changelog / Jun 16 
Vector database service Pinecone is down as their service has gone through some breaking changes. Will take 1-2 days to update. Sorry! This means search is failing and similar prompts. :(
changelog / Jun 06 
on a prompt page, blocks were listed first, then backlinks. Now they are listed mixed together in order of original block date. Works, but still needs ui and speed optimizations.
changelog / May 30 
fixed a caching bug. if you delete a block on the main home page, the cache now correctly clears. For the past few weeks, it would appear to no be deleted until a full refresh or something else changed.
changelog / May 27 
fixed the crazy bug from yesterday where new line or lines added at the start of an existing note would not save. Weirdest thing ever. Browser would seem to remove new lines unless the html started with a new line.

Basically my template needed to be 

<textarea>
text</textarea>

instead of:
<textarea>text</textarea>

crazy right?
changelog / May 26 
new model and prompt deployed for ai/edit voice editing feature. Uses full context of the note -- it's a lot better, but I'm sure it's not perfect. 

Also found a crazy bug where a new line added to the start of an existing note doesn't save. Like wut -- need investigation asap.
changelog / May 25 
Updated copy on landing page.

Small adjustment on revision history so the text is selectable.
changelog / May 20 
brotli added back to landing page
changelog / May 18 
bug fix with similar prompts feature that would cause them to never load -- I think related to django upgrade some weeks back.
changelog / May 17 
More major issues fixed for usernames with capital letters in it. Future, Past, Archive may not have been loading and search issues as well. Grug take long time! But work now. 

Some backend updates. Switched PyMYSQL to mysqlclient. Not sure if it makes a speed difference, but I'd like to think it's an improvement. Also laid groundwork for websockets if needed, though note used for anything yet.
changelog / Apr 20 
Ooof, fixed a csrf error on audio recording -- partially broken since april 7th.
changelog / Apr 17 
fixed a few endpoints that were no longer getting compressed due to yesterdays upgrades.
changelog / Apr 16 
first deploy migrating from Django 3.2 to 5! and gunicorn to uvicorn server! Welcome to modern web dev Grug.

We have server sent events -- it means slightly better device sync. You can try type in the same note on two different devices. 

This was a massive deploy. Hopefully nothing fundamentally broken, but Grug watch closely. 😅 Door open for many more improvements. 🤗
changelog / Apr 08 
fixed drag and drop blocks that were broken last week from revision history update...
changelog / Apr 07 
More aggressive caching on home, usually clearing cache on write. Shooting for sub 100ms server response. 

Actually, there were like 4-6 deploys today with various bugfixes of the caching.
changelog / Apr 05 
A bunch more orm/sql query optimizations. Less queries on load. And a couple indexes added. And importantly pretty significant improvement on save function. SPEED! yay.

Some adjustments to html to improve load speed.
changelog / Apr 04 
A few small and subtle query optimizations. Very small speed improvement.
changelog / Apr 03 
Minor adjustments to caching so stale data is avoided.

Better handling of pasted text and auto adjusting the textarea height.
changelog / Apr 02 
Speed update! Better preloading and some initial client side caching. Little snappier responses. 😍 wondering what I broke 😅🤓
changelog / Apr 01 
minimum implementation of edit 'revision history' for each block deployed. Needs work and needs diff formating still. Not functional on mobile yet, but soon!
changelog / Mar 26 
Small bug fix and reliability improvement to search/ask. 

Alteration and hopefully improve to how known entities are relied on vs chatgpt entity recognition. 

I'm sparse on details here, but changes deployed to production! :)
changelog / Mar 24 
A bunch of backend work on how backlinks are saved. Backlinks now have a creation date that will persist through saves and minor changes. 
    It's not much of a big deal right now, but I'm hoping it can provide some additional context in the future, to help identify stale tasks for example.

Backlinks are copied to new days on persistent blocks.

Persistent blocks remove lines that are strikethroughed out the next day. That is, if the line is surrounded by ~~, it gets deleted.
    Will be adding this as a user setting soon.

Small front end rendering fix.
changelog / Mar 03 
oh man, fixed a bad bug. Tags from hashtags and brackets were not properly creating backlinks for a while. 

Shaved 6 queries off the home screen load. Probably not a noticeable speed difference, but it brings joy to my heart.
changelog / Mar 02 
Encoding issues kinda fixed with latest version of chrome. Everything was rendering as symbols. Now seems ok.
changelog / Feb 25 
Made the headers sticky on the datatype pages.
changelog / Feb 23 
such a dumb bug to last this long. Capital letters in usernames no longer break urls.
changelog / Feb 21 
right clicking on the quick toggle button does the equivalent of ctrl-shift-return -- the default being markdown strike through around the line. Already found a cursor positioning bug, will fix later this week lol.
changelog / Feb 16 
Sorry! there was a major bug since mid january that made natural language dates no longer link -- or actually they were linked, but it wasn't visible on that day. It should be fixed now.
changelog / Jan 22 
Right clicking on a link brings up a context menu that allows changing the datatype. Minimum viable features!
    Most useful if AI gets it wrong. 
    Also allows creating autotags. 
    Needs to be in view mode, it doesn't make sense in edit mode.
    
    Unlinked mentions or backlinks are show at the bottom of prompt pages. WIP.
    
    There are still some edge cases and bugs related to these features!
changelog / Jan 15 
Added Inter and Roboto as fonts.
changelog / Jan 14 
one line bug fix to prevent possible creation of two unique blocks within the same prompt and date. Which should be only possible if you set a title. In this case, the path was created with a timestamp which shouldn't be possible.
changelog / Jan 06 
small bug fix where ai tags could occur within existing manual links or urls
changelog / Jan 04 
fixed a diff match patch error that caused some sync errors around emoji.
changelog / Dec 31 
First deploy of quick toggle ui feature that adds the ctrl-return shortcut as a clickable feature on desktop and on mobile.
changelog / Dec 26 
drag handles moved to top of blocks
changelog / Dec 24 
Fixed some formatting issues from dark design update, probably a dozen or so little tweaks.

Fixed some issues on date views where 'persistent blocks' wouldn't display.
changelog / Dec 23 
Darker, but cleaner design deployed. 

Smaller text on mobile.
changelog / Dec 13 
fixed a bug. If two browsers or devices were open. And the block was brand new, ie never saved, typing in one would not sync to the other with out a refresh. Now it should.
changelog / Dec 10 
Some tests written, and non-visible improvements/bugfixes to sync. Chasing one last bug where you would lose a few words on save. Grug saw maybe 3x a month. Grug think we got it! But needs battle testing.

Slight alteration to speech to text ai/edit prompt. Handles some situations a little more consistently.

UnboundLocalError on search bug fix. Small font change to make date and prompt filtering more obvious during search.
changelog / Dec 02 
small ui updates, replaced some emoji with svg

started work on save history ui, incomplete