I’m excited to share a tiny service that’s very close to my heart - Today Has Been.
Here’s how it works: We have a phone number that has WhatsApp Business API enabled. Your messages sent to this number (after you activate your free trial) are added to your journal. It’s a super light weight journaling service - no app download or registration is required.
We also send you a daily nudge asking “How did your day go?” and after you have a few posts we send you a random blast from the past.
Why I built it: I was an active user and fan of Ohlife - only journalling app that could make me write 100s of entries. So, when it shut down it left a hole in my life too (just like it did for Paul G - https://x.com/paulg/status/1216714155731890176). :)
“Today Has Been” is Ohlife on WhatsApp.
I’d love to hear your feedback and ideas. Please visit http://todayhasbeen.com and tap on Get Started. (Note: Works on WhatsApp only)
Also, if you have questions on using WhatsApp as a platform, I’m happy to chat.
Thank you!
I guess it's technically not "public" but then again it's shipping your most private thoughts to WhatsApp and an unknown person and "privacy" isn't mentioned on the landing page once.
Personally I can recommend DayOne which is built by a trusted entity Automattic (Wordpress etc.) and they do have a big focus on privacy: https://dayoneapp.com/privacy-pledge/
Does it feel like it works for small (and personal-use) players with buttons, callbacks, and the rest
Especially if they do it every day/most days, having the option to see what you wrote "on this day" 2-3 years back is great. Especially when I try to include people's names who I was interacting with (but who are easy to forget 3 years later). It can be a nice reminder to text them and say you were "just randomly", unprompted, thinking about them -- 'How's it going?'
Apologies for the self-promotion, but I've done something similar for Telegram, and I believe some people here might be also' interested in that.
I also wanted to record more of my life, so I created a Telegram bot that saves all messages you send it into a Google Spreadsheet.
Hashtags can be used to split the text into sheets and columns, if so desired. Besides jotting down quick thoughts, this is very handy for short-form journaling such as tracking expenses, workouts, mood, period, weight, diet, etc., with the added bonus of easy charting and summarization from within the spreadsheet. It also supports pictures and other attachments that are uploaded automatically to Google Drive and linked into the spreadsheet.
Feel free to check it out, it's free of charge and does not require any registration: https://t.me/gsheet_notes_bot
Quoting from whatsapp website (https://faq.whatsapp.com/5913398998672934)
> Use https://wa.me/<number> where the <number> is a full phone number in international format.
Put your own number and you chat with yourself. Pin it to top, so it's always there. I use it to add information, search later use cases.
Right now I message myself but let's say if one wanted to maintain a separate chat for notes or some other purpose, they could create an infinite number of groups with just them in it and get it working.
Of course I think OP's solution is offering an interactive experience more than just one way communicaton.
BUT you won't find anything if you search for "me", you have to search for "you".
Also, is exporting possible? Let's say I would like to export all text / media to my pc, is that possible?
Any chance you’re accessing your messages from a different device and your main phone is offline?
Whatsapp wasn’t like this before, it was when they introduced E2E that old media started to get lost.
If you want a groupchat with accessible history, whatsapp is not the place sadly.
I looked into it previously, and it seemed to imply software services were not welcome. From the WhatsApp Business Policy[1] (emphasis mine):
> 4. Prohibited Organizations and Restrictions on Use
> ...
> If you use Catalogs, or provide any other commerce experiences to sell or otherwise facilitate the exchange of goods or services prohibited by the Meta Commerce Policy, then we may prohibit you from using some or all of the WhatsApp Business Services.
And the Meta Commerce Policy[2] says
> Prohibited Content
> 16. No item for Sale: Listings may not promote news, humor, or other content that does not offer any product for sale.
> 19. Services: Services may not be listed.
> 22. Subscriptions and Digital Products: Listings may not promote the buying or selling of downloadable digital content, digital subscriptions, and digital accounts.
It was unclear to me whether this applies only to marketplace-like platforms, or any service or product that you provide yourself. A tenuous ground to build a company on.
I wish there was something like that end-to-end encrypted. You are already using E2E encryption for the communication channel (WhatsApp). I wish there was a hookup to store the same data without breaking down the chain of encryption. WhatApp should look into that. Something like ProtonDrive connected to WhatsApp and APIs.
Unfortunately, Diarium also reduces image quality significantly, even with their ‘higher quality’ setting. My Day One diary export is 90% larger than the data store Diarium syncs to webdav, the loss of fidelity is especially obvious when looking at screenshots.
(You typoed diary and I couldn’t resist ;) )
"You can try THB out for 14 days for absolutely free. At the end of the trial period, you can choose between our monthly ($5 per month) or annual ($48 per year) subscription plans."
I have also added it in the bot before you subscribe to the free trial. Thanks for the feedback.
"When did I last buy 10kg of garbanzo beans, and from where? What price did I pay?"
And get an answer like:
"Actually, you didn’t buy 10kg; last time you only bought 5kg from X shop at Y price. Based on your past consumption, your stock will likely run out by next week. Should I set a reminder for today, after your gym session, to pick some up? (X shop is on your way home from the gym.)"
This level of contextual response would be incredibly useful. These days, I bulk order everything thanks to my streamlined note-taking and reminder setup. I’m surprised there isn’t already an open-source tool that works this well.
I keep my day organized with simple methods. During my morning walks, I plan out my tasks, priorities, and schedule—talking through everything in my head. These thoughts are then transcribed using speech-to-text and sent to an LLM. Since LLMs aren't great at remembering specific facts or handling complex relationships, I pair it with a knowledge graph to keep everything organized.
This setup generates reminders, creates schedules, and flags conflicts where I can reschedule or drop tasks. I dislike most conventional note-taking or reminder apps, so I stick to plain text files stored across Dropbox, a Raspberry Pi home server, and cloud storage like S3.
To keep me on track, I’ve built a custom notification system that sends reminders through text, email, Telegram, and WhatsApp. These notifications continue—staggered across platforms—until I acknowledge them. Since I rarely use my phone, I rely heavily on a smartwatch that receives SMS notifications. It’s a game changer: with its own SIM and long battery life, it costs me almost nothing—just $30 a year.
I avoid traditional apps for adding new information. Instead, I use a private Telegram group with a bot for input. Messaging in this group has become the easiest way for me to update my system, and I’ve grown to rely more and more on Telegram bots for this reason.
For example, yesterday the system reminded me to check my solar batteries. Months ago, I had told it that I watered them, and it automatically followed up at the right time. It’s these small, automated details that help me stay on top of long-term tasks.
I’m using Gemini Flash (a dirt-cheap, fast LLM), Neo4j, and Whisper, all tied together with Python glue scripts to make this work. Maybe someday I’ll have hardware powerful enough to run a local LLM, but for now, this setup is more than good enough.
I haven't built out a smoother toolchain because I haven't settled on a form factor / affordance.
How much time do you spend maintaining your system? If you wanted to onboard a family member, what kind of effort would that take?
The main restrictions are that you have to use the main device every 14 days and can only have ~4 linked devices.
https://faq.whatsapp.com/378279804439436/?helpref=faq_conten...
I’m trying to think of a rationale and really can’t. Any ideas?
While WhatsApp simply uses instance on your phone via webapi on your desktop.
It serves my purpose (and that of some friends), so I have no plans to monetise or even update it.
The focus was on searchable audio. So you send either a text or an audio. It passes through Open ai whisper and replies with your message transcribed.
idk if I’d ever trust a 3rd party with all my notes, thoughts, “entire stream of consciousness” or anything of the like.
I’ll stick to txt files and/or paper.
I usualy don't like to hate on people's work, but damn I hate this thing.
I prefer trustless rather than believing in other entities good will.
I rather use a pen and paper.
Also, when people already know it's a bot, there is no illusion.
Also, interactive elements like buttons/images etc. are not supported.
