Jottit

Jottit makes getting a website as easy as filling out a textbox. Each site lives at its own subdomain (myblog.jottit.org) or its own secret URL (jottit.org/abc12/).

This is a modern port of the 2007 Jottit codebase originally written by Simon Carstensen and Aaron Swartz. The Python 2 + web.py + Jinja 1 + psycopg2 stack has been rewritten on Flask 3 + SQLAlchemy Core 2 + Jinja2 + psycopg3, with the original look-and-feel preserved.

Running locally

You'll need uv and Postgres.

# Install Postgres and start it
brew install postgresql@16
brew services start postgresql@16

# Create the dev database
createdb jottit_dev

# Install Python dependencies
uv sync

# Configure your environment
cp .env.example .env

# Create the schema
uv run --env-file .env alembic upgrade head

# Run the dev server
uv run flask --app jottit run --port 5000

Open http://localtest.me:5000. The default JOTTIT_DOMAIN=localtest.me:5000 uses localtest.me — *.localtest.me resolves to 127.0.0.1 — so subdomain routing works without any /etc/hosts edits.

Migrations

The schema is managed with Alembic. jottit.db.metadata is the source of truth; migration files live under migrations/versions/.

# Apply all pending migrations
uv run --env-file .env alembic upgrade head

# Autogenerate a new migration after editing jottit/db.py
uv run --env-file .env alembic revision --autogenerate -m "describe the change"

# Inspect history
uv run --env-file .env alembic current
uv run --env-file .env alembic history

If your dev database already has tables but no alembic_version row (e.g., it was created by an older metadata.create_all bootstrap), stamp it at the initial revision before running upgrade:

uv run --env-file .env alembic stamp 704f4e95f8bf

Always review autogenerated migrations before committing — Alembic can miss column renames, server-side defaults, and check constraints.

Tests

uv run pytest

Tests spin up a fresh jottit_test database against your local Postgres, run, and drop it at the end. They use metadata.create_all directly rather than the migration chain, so adding a column to jottit/db.py is enough to keep them green — but you still need to write a migration for it to reach prod.

License

AGPLv3 — see LICENSE.md and NOTICE for the relicensing path from the 2007 LGPLv3 original.