Pile is a desktop app for reflective journaling. It's about simplicity, keeping your data local, and enhancing your journaling experience with AI.
- Download the latest version of Pile by going to the Pile releases page.
- On macOS Open the
.zipor.dmgfile and drag the application to the destination of your choice (optional), such as yourApplications/folder. On Windows, use the.exeto install. - Finally open the application, create a
New Pile, and start your reflective journey.
Enhance your journaling experience by integrating OpenAI's GPT AI reflections into Pile. If you have access to OpenAI's GPT-4 API, you can use your API key to:
- Reflect on entries: Click "reflect" on any written entry to get AI-generated insights and thoughts as a reply in the thread.
- Search or ask questions: Click the "reflect" icon on the top-right of the window to search or ask question about your entire journal.
How to setup AI features: head over to platform.openai.com/api-keys and create a new API key. Click the settings icon on the top-right corner of Pile and enter your secret API key into the API key field.
Before you use the AI-powered features within this app, we strongly recommend that you configure a spending limit within OpenAI's interface to prevent unexpected costs.
Pile can automatically back up each pile to a private GitHub repository. After every save, changes are committed and pushed within 5 seconds.
How to set up:
- Create a new private repository on GitHub (empty, no README).
- Open Pile → click the Settings icon (top-right) → scroll to GitHub Sync.
- Enable the toggle.
- Paste the repository URL (e.g.
https://github.com/your-username/your-pile.git). - (Optional) Add a Personal Access Token if you want to authenticate via PAT instead of your system git credentials (SSH keys / macOS Keychain). Leave blank if you already have git credentials configured on your machine.
- Click Connect & Push — this initialises the repo and does the first push.
After setup, Pile will auto-sync 5 seconds after each save. A dot in the nav bar shows the sync status:
| Colour | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Dim grey | Idle (sync enabled but no recent activity) |
| Yellow (pulsing) | Syncing… |
| Green | Synced successfully |
| Red | Sync failed (hover for error detail) |
You can also click Sync Now in Settings to push immediately.
On a new machine: install Pile, create a pile at a local path, then in Settings connect it to the same GitHub repo and click "Connect & Push". Your notes will be pulled down automatically on the next sync.
If you'd like to contribute to Pile, feel free to fork the repository, make your changes, and submit a pull request. Contributions are welcomed and appreciated, however this is an experimental project, so any changes and new features are merged into this distribution of Pile at my discretion.
For a detailed guide on contributing, read the CONTRIBUTING.md file.
The software code is licensed under the MIT License. The brand name, and other brand assets are proprietary and not included in the MIT license.
See the LICENSE.md file for details.
Many thanks and appreciation to all these people and projects for their contributions to Pile.
- Zach Bogart: for the icon design.
- Electron react boilerplate: for making it easier to launch desktop apps.