Contact Book

Productivity toolkit for managing contacts and relationships — add entries, plan follow-ups, track interactions, set reminders, tag contacts, and generate reports. All data stays local.

Commands

Command Behavior

• With arguments: Each command logs the input with a timestamp to its own dedicated log file (e.g., add.log, plan.log, tag.log)
• Without arguments: Each command displays the 20 most recent entries from its respective log file

Data Storage

• Default data directory: ~/.local/share/contact-book/
• Per-command logs: $DATA_DIR/.log (e.g., add.log, plan.log, remind.log)
• History log: $DATA_DIR/history.log — master timeline of all activity
• Export files: $DATA_DIR/export. — generated by the export command
• All data is local plain-text. No cloud, no sync, no network calls.

Requirements

• Bash 4+ (uses set -euo pipefail)
• No external dependencies or API keys required
• Works entirely offline — your data stays on your machine

When to Use

1. Building a personal CRM — Use add, tag, and track to maintain a lightweight contact database with interaction history
2. Planning follow-ups — Use plan and remind to schedule and track outreach to important contacts
3. Maintaining communication streaks — Track how consistently you stay in touch with key people using streak
4. Weekly relationship reviews — Run weekly-review to reflect on your networking activity and identify gaps
5. Exporting contact data — Use export json or export csv to produce structured data for other tools or spreadsheets

Examples

# Add a new contact
contact-book add "Alice Chen — PM at Acme Corp — alice@acme.com"

# Plan a follow-up
contact-book plan "Follow up with Alice re: partnership proposal by Friday"

# Track an interaction
contact-book track "Had coffee with Bob, discussed Q2 roadmap"

# Tag a contact
contact-book tag "Alice Chen: investor, priority"

# Set a reminder
contact-book remind "Send birthday card to Carol — March 25"

# Log a weekly review
contact-book weekly-review "Reached out to 5 contacts, 3 replied, 1 meeting scheduled"

# Search across all logs
contact-book search "Alice"

# Export all data as CSV
contact-book export csv

# View summary statistics
contact-book stats

# Check system status
contact-book status

# Show recent activity
contact-book recent

How It Works

Each command maintains its own log file in the data directory. Entries are stored as timestamp|value lines. The stats command aggregates counts across all log files. The export command merges all logs into a single file in your chosen format (JSON, CSV, or TXT). Every action is also recorded in history.log as a master audit trail.

Tips

• Run any command without arguments to review its recent entries — quick way to check history
• Use contact-book recent for a cross-command activity timeline
• Combine search with shell tools: contact-book search "2025" | grep "plan"
• The prioritize command helps surface your most important relationship-building tasks
• Run contact-book help at any time for the complete command reference

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