joshua421

"When your children ask in time to come, 'What do these stones mean?' then you shall let your children know..." — Joshua 4:21–22

In Joshua 4, Israel crosses the Jordan and piles twelve stones into a memorial, so that later — when the question comes — the story of God's faithfulness gets retold. That memory, carried into the rhythm of a life, is the spirit of this project.

What it is

joshua421 calls your LLM to help you reflect on your day and set it up for the Lord — and writes that into your diary (your calendar's notes today) so it shapes the day, not just your inbox.

It is not a devotional you read passively. You reflect, actively, with your own LLM (Claude, ChatGPT, …); joshua421 is the tools, the memory, and the write-surface. The loop: an email nudges you → a link opens your LLM → it helps you reflect and set the day up for the Lord → with your approval it writes notes into your calendar → joshua421 records that you reflected, never what you said.

Four promises: behaviour, not content (joshua421 itself stores nothing at all — no server, no database, nothing on your machine. A reflected day is one empty Marker entry; anything with words in it — a note, a day summary, a rollup, your grounding — is written only where you approved it, in your calendar, as private as your calendar is) · additive (never rewriting or deleting your words) · permission at the boundary (nothing written without your approval, in chat — held by the companion's instructions today, not yet by the protocol) · grace, not guilt (a memorial to God's faithfulness, not a scorecard).

Presence holds; the ask scales. A quiet stretch changes how much the nudge asks of you — never whether it arrives. How you want to be met on the way back is something you name once, in plain words; nothing is ever inferred from how you behave. → ADR 0006

joshua421 makes no model calls of its own — you bring whichever assistant you like, so no LLM key is needed. → docs/design.md has the full vision and privacy model.

Related MCP server: Obsidian Diary MCP Server

How you use it

You never call joshua421 directly. You talk to your assistant; the assistant calls the tools.

Once. npm run setup connects joshua421 to your assistant. Then run the begin prompt (in your client's prompt picker): a gentle conversation that establishes your intention, tone, weekly rhythm, church day and quiet time, and saves them with set_grounding — as one entry in your own calendar, still yours to edit by hand.

Each day. A nudge email arrives — morning setup, evening summary — the morning one carrying yesterday's summary back to you in your own words. It offers two ways in: a link that opens the conversation already prefilled (into Claude Desktop, where the MCP is connected and your diary can be written; the ChatGPT link reflects with you but writes nothing), or two questions you can paste into any assistant. In the conversation, yours reads your grounding (get_grounding) and your day (read_day) and reflects with you on this day — your actual events, your own words. When something is worth keeping it drafts it, you approve it, and apply_day_notes writes it: appended under a marker inside the event, or as a private side-entry in the same slot when the event is shared, so a reflection of yours never lands on someone else's invite. Every write is reversible — undo_write strips only joshua421's block from your event, or deletes an entry joshua421 created; your real meetings are structurally out of reach.

Now and then. On your church evening, at a month or season genuinely turning, or whenever you ask: look_back gathers that period's stones — the days you showed up, the summaries you kept, the rollups already written — and your assistant weaves the memorial with you: look how faithful God has been. If it lands somewhere true, save_rollup keeps it as that period's own entry. "Your year with God" is the headline stone.

That is the whole surface: one setup, an email, a conversation. Everything written lands in your calendar; joshua421 keeps only that you reflected — and your grounding, by your choice.

Run it

• npm run setup — the one guided path: creates .env, walks you through a free Google OAuth client, mints your token, proves each pipe, and connects your assistant. docs/setup.md is the click-by-click (and the two gotchas — the 7-day token trap and connecting Claude Desktop).

• npm run doctor — re-check every pipe, read-only, any time something looks off.

• npm run worker:install — run the daily nudges in the background (macOS launchd); npm run worker runs them in the foreground instead.

• npm run migrate — one-time, for pre-cutover installs: moves the old local log and grounding file into your calendar.

Config lives in .env (see .env.example): your Google OAuth and calendar choices, and JOSHUA421_LINK_BASE — the https page the email's Claude link goes through (Gmail refuses to carry a raw claude:// link; docs/setup.md → "Why the link goes via a web page").

How the repo is organised

src/
  core/         the pure engine — ports (Mailer · Diary · Log · Grounding ·
                Journal), flows, cadence, persona; no I/O
  adapters/     the impure edges — Google (calendar + Gmail send-only), the
                Journal-backed Log and Grounding (the calendar as database),
                legacy SQLite/file adapters kept as migration sources
  setup/        the guided path — setup wizard, OAuth flow, .env writer,
                one-time migration, worker installer, path helpers
  mcp.ts        entrypoint: the stdio MCP server your LLM calls
  worker.ts     entrypoint: the scheduled nudge emails
  prod-deps.ts  the one production wiring of ports → adapters
  env.ts        resolves .env and paths by file location, never cwd
  testing/      in-memory fakes for the ports
docs/
  design.md     the vision, promises, architecture, direction
  status.md     built vs. decided vs. planned
  setup.md      click-by-click setup, troubleshooting
  glossary.md   the fixed vocabulary (Diary, Journal, Grounding, Marker, …)
  adr/          decision records — the "why" that must not be re-litigated
  go/           the email's Claude door: an https page that bounces to the
                claude:// scheme, because Gmail deletes non-http hrefs
.mcp.json       connects joshua421 to Claude Code sessions started in this repo

The shape follows the design: everything in core/ is pure and talks only to ports; everything impure is an adapter; the two entrypoints and prod-deps.ts are the only places wiring happens. Tests live beside the file they test.

Scope

Dogfood first — me, my own tokens, no account system. Self-hosting is open to anyone today: npm run setup has every user bring their own free Google OAuth client and hold their own tokens, so no one — this project included — ever holds them. A hosted service (us holding tokens: custody, minimal scopes, verification) is a deliberate, later step — see docs/status.md for where the build is.

License & use

joshua421 is a gift: free for noncommercial use — individuals; personal, study, and hobby use; religious observance; and any charitable, educational, research, health, or government organization, regardless of funding. Commercial use requires written permission — please get in touch.

Licensed under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0 — see LICENSE and NOTICE. If you build on or share it, keep the licence and the Required Notice with it. (Plain intent, not legal advice; the LICENSE text governs.)