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Editions

nt ships in two fully feature-equivalent editions. Both read and write notes in the same ~/.config/nt directory and produce the same output, so you can switch between them at any time.

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Comparison

	Bash nt.sh	Go nt-go/
Dependencies	bash 4+, git, sed	Go 1.21+, git (only at build time)
Runtime dependencies	bash, git, sed, grep	git
Install	Copy script to $PATH	make install or go build -o nt ./cmd/nt
Portability	Any Unix/macOS with bash 4+	Single static binary — any OS/arch
macOS compatibility	Requires brew-installed bash 4+	Works with stock macOS
Windows	WSL / Git Bash only	Native (no WSL needed)
Feature parity	✓ Full	✓ Full
Terminal rendering	ANSI via echo -e	ANSI via compiled regexes
Checkbox regex	sed + bash regex	regexp package
Binary size	~15 KB (script)	~3–5 MB (compiled)

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Bash Edition Details

The Bash edition (nt.sh) is a single self-contained script. It uses:

• sed for in-place line edits (checkbox toggling, pattern replacement)
• grep for search and pattern matching
• find for note discovery
• bash built-in regex (=~) for Markdown rendering

It is the easiest to audit and modify, and works on any Unix system with a reasonably modern bash.

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Go Edition Details

The Go edition (nt-go/) is a compiled binary with no runtime dependencies beyond git. It uses:

• The regexp package for all Markdown parsing and checkbox manipulation
• os.ReadFile / os.WriteFile for atomic note updates
• bufio.Scanner for the interactive toggle TUI
• os/exec for editor and git subprocess calls

Because it is a compiled binary, it starts faster and handles edge cases in file paths and Unicode more robustly than the shell version.

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Which Should I Use?

• Bash — if you want something you can read and modify in 5 minutes, or if you are on a system where installing Go is inconvenient.
• Go — if you are on macOS (avoids the bash 3 / bash 4 issue), want a single portable binary, or prefer a compiled tool.

Both editions are maintained together and remain feature-identical.