Keep your prompts safe and private. It's not THAT hard! (pt.2)

This is part two of a longer article. In the first part of it, I'm thinking over the problem of newly sprouted known and unknown companies, that offer "prompt saving" service, and that by reading their TOS and Privacy Policy, for me personally this is well cloaked prompt harvesting. I might be wrong, but in any way, inventing something like this is at least pointless, considering what the open-source community can offer you.

(Part II) The solution

As a prompt aficionado, you will need an easy solution, that will allow you to keep your prompts in a safe and private environment. Categorization and even tagging would be nice. What else... ah right - you'll need an option to synchronize it across your devices, and just in case you are a bit paranoid - even end-to-end encryption and a protected environment for your eyes only. Sounds like much money on the table. Add a useful Google Chrome tool to easily crop prompts, and we're talking about an expensive tool suite out there.

Maybe the right decision will be to revert to the "prompt save" sites. WRONG!

Open-source will always fascinate me, and I am quite a fan of it. And by some chance I know the right and the perfect tool for the purpose. Yep, that's right, your solution is https://joplinapp.org/.

This little note-keeper is a good companion in everything you do, not only prompts - everything you want to keep in one place! Imagine something like Evernote, but open source and with a simplified interface. Here are just a few features if you don't already read those on their website:

1. Note folders, and tags. Pretty much everything you need to get started.
2. Markup language, rich content. And, oh boy, I mean rich. I am using it to keep my selected EU Reports, research articles and other .pdfs for reading across my devices. Rich text, and multimedia for your enjoyment are here!
3. It has cloud sync. I use Dropbox as my preferred cloud solution. But you can use your OneDrive as well, and the setup takes just a couple of minutes. Once you're done, you can sync all your devices across the cloud. How cool is that? Don't have Dropbox, or OneDrive - well, they offer Joplin Cloud too, which for ~3EUR/mo gives you the same ability, and their data server is in France. Thus, GDPR plays here. And before anyone says - "ha! I knew it - It's paid after all", well, no it isn't, but you will need to put some extra effort around a simple export strategy across your devices for those prompts (yes, you can do export and import notes, across devices) ... or give away your prompts to the "prompts savers" out there. :D Or just use Joplin either on your desktop or phone.
4. It has a clipper Google Chrome app! This is where the real sweet magic happens, and the boost for your prompts flourishes. All you need is to select the text you want to use, give the name of the prompt and save it into selected folder. Seconds of work, and then you have it at your fingertips:

The result is saved to your Joplin notebook. And you can have as many Notebooks as you want! From there, the process is reversed and you can easily find and copy your prompt, and honestly - this is much easier than the crappy ChatGPT interface that they remove when you opt out of their harvesting practice (yes they do this too) with your prompts. You can additionally add tags to the note, so it is even easier to search for it and categorize it. You can keep multiple prompts as an evolving experiment too.

The only small effort needed is enabling the application via Google Chrome, Firefox (or Brave Browser - another software I would recommend), as you need to do a couple of extra steps explained here, but well... it's NOT that hard, primarily if you aim to apply for a prompt engineer role, LOL.

1. It has E2EE. Now, for you as a regular user, the end-to-end encryption might not be too important, but imagine you have on your flash drive the standalone Joplin app, and all your cyber-security handy Bash scripts, Python snippets, PowerShell commands, predefined configurations, etc. are there? Or you are an investigative journalist who collects viable information on a case? Well, then end-to-end encryption comes in really handy. Well, it works for prompts too, as you can set password that unlocks your app, so nobody can steal your path prompt engineer... nevermind :D
2. Just for geeks. If you really want to get wild with Joplin - well, it has an API and a plethora of plugins here: https://github.com/joplin/plugins. If you're a geek who just comes this simple, yet fascinating tool - you can make your own plugins and integrate your own workflow. If you are less proficient - you can still use the ready super cool plugins - an example this kick-ass assistant, that directly integrates with your LLMs:

See, it's not that hard to make your prompts really yours - it takes 10 minutes to install Joplin, and 10 more to get familiar with the interface.

1. This is the cherry on top of the cake. You can also have tasks. Yep, tasks with alarms too.

I can continue praising Joplin, as I am really, really excited by the way it works and helps me organize many of my books, prompts, bookmarks, and even cybersec tools, but I believe you already are making the next step to owning your own prompts. ;)

In a world that is full of fake prophets, sneak oil sellers, and sleazy data-sucking corporations, you can leave a meaningful trace only by making something really useful, transparent, privacy-respecting, and savvy that will actually help the people and contribute to society. Joplin is such an example. But who am I to judge!

If you have come across a better way to save and organize your prompts - let me know in the comments. Cheers!