A private, offline journal for the decisions you make — and the ones you want to get better at.
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Inspired by Farnam Street's decision journal practice: write down a decision as you're making it, come back to it months later, log how it actually played out, and slowly build a real picture of your own judgment over time.
Built for macOS by Sina Meraji.
Most journaling apps want your data in their cloud. This one is the opposite. Decision Journal is designed from the ground up for the kind of thinking you'd never want leaking — career pivots, relationships, money, risk, the honest stuff you'd normally only trust to a paper notebook.
- Your journal stays on your Mac. There is no account. There is no cloud. Your decisions, reviews, analytics, audio transcripts, and AI coach conversations all live on-device and never leave it. A network kill-switch in the main process blocks every outbound request by default — the only exceptions are a small, explicit allowlist (app update checks, Whisper model downloads) documented in Network activity below. None of those ever carry your journal data.
- Your journal is encrypted. The database file is locked with a key derived from your PIN and your Mac's login keychain. If someone copies the file off your disk, it looks like random noise to them.
- You hold the only key. There is no "forgot your PIN" flow. If you lose the PIN, your data is gone — by design.
- Head to the Releases page and download the latest
Decision Journal-*.dmg. - Open the DMG and drag Decision Journal into your Applications folder.
- Launch it from Applications.
- Create your 6-digit PIN. You'll use this to unlock the app every time you open it.
- If your Mac has Touch ID, the app will offer to let you unlock with your fingerprint — your PIN still works as a fallback.
That's it. No sign-up, no email, no account to create.
- Decisions — the main list of everything you've recorded, with search and filtering.
- New Decision — capture a decision as you make it: what you're deciding, what you considered, what you expect to happen, and when to revisit. Dictate it hands-free with on-device Whisper transcription if you'd rather talk than type.
- Reviews — come back to past decisions and log how things actually turned out. This is where the real learning happens.
- Analytics — see patterns in your own decision quality over time: timeline, review status, mental-state distribution, and mental-state trends.
- Chat — a local AI coach (powered by Ollama, running entirely on your machine) to talk through past decisions, check for bias, and think through opportunity costs.
- Settings — toggle Touch ID, manage Whisper models, restore from backup, check for app updates, lock instantly.
All of your data lives in one place on your Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Decision Journal/.
decisions.db— your encrypted journal. Open it with any SQLite tool without the right key and it'll just say "file is not a database."vault.json— the wrapped encryption key. Useless on its own.
If you ever want a fresh start, quit the app and delete those two files.
The app is offline-first. Your journal is never transmitted anywhere, and a kill-switch in the main process blocks every outbound request by default. There are three narrow exceptions, all documented here:
| Request | Who triggers it | When / how often | Destination |
|---|---|---|---|
| Check for app updates | App (automatic on launch) + user button in Settings → About. Can be turned off in Settings → About → "Check for updates automatically". | Once per app launch (or never, if disabled) | github.com (GitHub Releases feed, via electron-updater) |
| Download an app update | User only (click "Download Update") | Only when you opt in — auto-download is disabled | github.com (release assets) |
| Download a Whisper transcription model | User only (click "Download" in Settings → Transcription) | Only when you opt in, one time per model | huggingface.co and its CDN |
What's not a network request:
- Your decisions, reviews, analytics, and chat history. These never leave your Mac.
- The local AI coach. Chat runs against a local Ollama daemon on
localhost:11434— it's on-device, not over the internet. - Audio transcription. Whisper runs fully on-device once the model is downloaded.
- External links. Clicking a "learn more" link opens your default browser, which is separate from the app's network sandbox.
There is no telemetry, no crash reporting, and no "anonymous analytics" of any kind.
- Offline for your data. See Network activity above for the full list of exceptions (app update checks, optional Whisper model downloads). None of them ever carry your journal content.
- Encrypted at rest. Your journal is stored in an encrypted SQLite database (SQLCipher). The encryption key is a random 256-bit key generated once on your first launch.
- Your PIN protects the key, and macOS protects the PIN. Your 6-digit PIN is run through a slow key-stretching function (Argon2id) and used to encrypt the real key. That encrypted blob is then encrypted again using macOS's built-in Keychain, which is tied to your Mac login password and the Secure Enclave. So even if someone copies your database file, they can't brute-force the PIN — they'd need to also unlock your Mac account.
- Touch ID is convenience, not a replacement. When you enable Touch ID, your fingerprint just provides a quicker path to the same encryption key. Your PIN is still the source of truth.
- Quantum computers? The crypto here is symmetric (AES-256, SHA-512, Argon2id) with no key exchange over any wire, so the "harvest now, decrypt later" attack that Signal-style end-to-end messaging has to worry about doesn't apply.
- Full decision-capture flow — title, context, options considered, expected outcome, review date, confidence level, mental state
- Review flow — log actual outcomes, lessons learned, compare to what you predicted
- Search and filtering across your journal
- Analytics — decision timeline, review status, mental-state distribution, mental-state over time
- Local AI coach via Ollama — chat with your past decisions, ask for second opinions, get bias checks, all running on-device
- On-device voice transcription via Whisper — dictate decisions hands-free, audio never leaves your Mac
- Encrypted backup and restore
- Touch ID unlock
- In-app updates via GitHub Releases (user-confirmed before download; automatic checks can be turned off in Settings)
- Opportunity-cost analysis
- Game-theoretic helpers for high-uncertainty, high-consequence choices
- Calibration curves (predicted vs. actual confidence over time)
- macOS 11 (Big Sur) or later
- Works on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs (universal binary)
- ~150 MB disk space
If you'd rather build it yourself instead of downloading the release:
git clone https://github.com/sinameraji/decision-journal-electron.git
cd decision-journal-electron
npm install
npm run devFor a packaged DMG from source, see CONTRIBUTING.md (or open an issue if you run into trouble).
MIT © Sina Meraji