Introduction

Hear me out: you need some way to capture information quickly and reliably. Your brain is definitely not such a tool. As soon as I read about Karpathy's note-taking, I felt compelled to test it. The system is elegant in its simplicity. Karpathy keeps one text note, appending ideas, tasks, quotes, or reminders to the top as they arise and periodically scrolling down to "rescue" valuable content back up, letting less relevant items sink out of focus.

My note-taking setup

My note-taking itself is very ergonomic. Capturing new information is only a few keystrokes away. Here's the flow:

• Open Neovim as a floating window with Alt+D. Today's file loads automatically: 2025-07-27.md.
• Check previous days' notes: Ctrl+P loads 2025-07-26.md.
• Ctrl+P again to reach 2025-07-25.md.
• Return to today's note with two Ctrl+N.
• Capture your thoughts.
• Send Neovim to background with Alt+D again.
• Resume your work.

My ./daily directory holds markdown files named after each day. With keybindings, I can quickly cycle back and forth through previous notes. It's fast, unintrusive, and quickly gets out of the way.

Fast but flawed

What it lacks, however, is the reviewing element that makes Karpathy's system so seductive to me. Going back through your thoughts one day at a time via Ctrl+N is clunky. I cannot view multiple days together, and besides, daily notes are usually too slim to merit a review on their own. The proof is that I rarely see myself going back in time to review them.

This clunky design shapes how I use my notes. In the back of my head, I know I won't go back to review them. Because reviewing feels too much work. I end up treating my notes as an ephemeral scratchpad. JSON blobs get dumped when I need to quickly search through them. Long CLI commands get pasted for quick editing before running. Longer Slack messages get drafted when I crave Vim motions for editing. This is great and all, but after a few days, these pieces of text belong in the trashbin. This mix of notes and scratches means I'm unlikely to revisit them. So I don't trust my current note-taking system to capture anything worth remembering.

A notebook, not a scratchpad

What I want from my notes is something else entirely. I want a notebook, not a scratchpad. Instead of long commands to edit or huge JSON blobs, I want ideas and nuggets of information. During reviews, I want those "oh, how interesting" moments. My goal is to use notes to chat with past versions of myself; a small time investment in reviews would yield much more value. With a few tweaks, I could transform it into Karpathy's version.

The missing piece: a simple review command

I don't like the one-big-note approach for writing, but it does seem ideal for reviewing. When writing to capture new information, it's refreshing to start the day with a blank page. Breaking note-taking into daily notes is ideal for me, so I'll keep my system that way.

So let's create a simple review workflow:

claude "Create a bash command that concatenates all .md files from ./daily/, sorted by filename in reverse order (newest first), and displays them using cat and glow. The newest notes should appear at the top."

The output:

find ./daily -name "*.md" -type f | sort -r | xargs cat | glow -p

Thank you, Sonnet.

The scratchpad is dead, long live the scratchpad

Finally, I need an alternate place to dump JSON and to edit commands. And as it turns out, I already have one. <leader>gn takes me to a file named after the current timestamp .llm/2025-07-27_13-59-12.md. Originally meant as a quick buffer to interact with LLMs from Neovim, it's organically become my scratchpad for editing throwaway text. I will make it official and press <leader>gn whenever I need a quick Neovim buffer do edit some text, chat with LLMs, or search through logs.

Right under my nose

I was one piece away from implementing Karpathy's note-taking system, and Sonnet just gave me the last part. All that's left is changing my attitude towards my notes. The regular notes will be for capturing relevant information, while the scratchpad is for throwaway text. From now on, I will commit daily to reviewing my notes and taking my vitamins. I will report back in a month on how well the new system suits me.

Let me know what you think by shooting me an email at: me at denismaciel.com.

Keep shipping (fast).