Journalit

Trust and transparency

Data, privacy and offline

Journalit is built around a simple idea: your trading journal should live in your Obsidian vault as files you control. This page explains exactly what is stored locally, what works offline, and what is transmitted only if you enable Pro imports.

What is free

  • Manual trade entry
  • Trade notes and attachments in your vault
  • Dashboards and analytics
  • Built-in templates and reviews
  • Works offline

What Pro unlocks

  • Automated CSV import
  • Automated MT4 and MT5 sync

Pro is about automated ingestion. Your journal files still live in your vault.

1) What is stored locally

Journalit stores your journal in your Obsidian vault. By default it uses a dedicated journal folder (!Journalit/) which you can change in settings. Trade notes are normal markdown files.

Examples

  • Trade notes as markdown files with frontmatter metadata (entries, exits, P&L, account, tags)
  • Reviews (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly) stored as markdown
  • Templates stored locally and editable
  • Attachments you add in Obsidian stay in your vault

For synced trades, Journalit organises files consistently by time period, for example:

year/month/week/trades/TICKER-DIRECTION-TIMESTAMP.md

2) What works offline

You can use Journalit offline for manual journalling, analytics, and reviews because the journal lives in your vault.

  • Works offline: trade notes, reviews, dashboards, analytics, and searching your vault
  • Needs internet: automated imports (CSV import and MT4/MT5 sync) and subscription checks

3) What is sent to Journalit servers

Journalit is local-first. Network features are optional.

Website (journalit.co)

  • Account information: email and name from your OAuth provider (Google, GitHub, Discord)
  • Payments: processed by Stripe (we do not see full card details)
  • Referral attribution: if you open a Journalit referral or affiliate link, the website may record the link used, the landing path, referrer host, and a first-party attribution cookie so we can connect the later sign-up or subscription to the right partner.

MT4 and MT5 sync (Pro)

If you enable MetaTrader sync, your MetaTrader terminal uploads broker reports to our FTP server for parsing. The backend extracts trade data and syncs the results back to your vault.

  • What is uploaded: broker HTML reports required to parse trades
  • What is not uploaded: your trade notes, screenshots, or other vault content
  • Limitations: hourly sync (not real-time) and English reports required

CSV import (Pro)

CSV import is an automated import workflow. Your imported trades are written to your vault as markdown.

4) Operational telemetry

We do not collect analytics about your trading journal content. To keep the website reliable, we may collect limited operational telemetry such as performance metrics and error traces for the web app.

Website-side referral attribution is separate from that telemetry. If you use a Journalit affiliate link, we may keep a small first-party referral record so we can attribute the resulting sign-up or subscription, block self-referrals, and reconcile commissions. That tracking applies to the website flow only, not to your local journal files.

We still do not use third-party ad trackers or inspect your vault contents for marketing purposes.

If you want the strictest offline setup, you can use the Obsidian plugin without logging in and without enabling any Pro imports.

5) How to verify

  • Uninstall the plugin and confirm your notes still exist as markdown files in your vault.
  • Disconnect from the internet and confirm you can still browse your journal, trade notes, and reviews.
  • If you enable MT sync, check your MetaTrader terminal logs for FTP uploads and verify that only reports are uploaded.

For the full privacy policy, see Privacy.