prayer-app/README.md

Prayer Journal

A todo-list style prayer app. Add prayer requests, record how God answered them, filter between active and answered, tag entries for organization, log individual prayer sessions, and receive push notifications on your phone.

Features

• Prayer requests — add a person, request text, and tags
• Answers — record how God answered and mark prayers complete
• Prayer log — tap "I Prayed This" to log each session with optional notes
• Calendar view — see your prayer activity by day
• Search — full-text search across requests, answers, and tags
• Export — download your journal as a Word (.docx) document
• Push notifications — daily digest and per-prayer reminders via ntfy

Running with Docker

Quick start (pull pre-built image)

docker compose up -d

Open http://localhost:3000.

Build locally

docker compose up --build -d

Data persistence

All data is stored in the bind-mounted /data directory:

File	Contents
prayers.json	All prayer requests and logs
settings.json	Notification settings (ntfy topic, times)

The default host path is /media/ZimaOS-HD/AppData/Prayer/Data. Change the volumes line in docker-compose.yml to match your server.

Timezone

Notification times (daily digest, reminders) are evaluated in the container's timezone. Set the TZ environment variable in docker-compose.yml to your local timezone so times fire when you expect:

environment:
  - TZ=America/Chicago   # or America/New_York, Europe/London, etc.

Restart the container after changing the timezone:

docker compose up -d

Push Notifications (ntfy)

Prayer Journal sends notifications via ntfy.sh — a free, open-source push service that works without an account.

Setup

1. Install the ntfy app on your phone — search "ntfy" on the App Store or Google Play, or visit ntfy.sh
2. Open the app and add a subscription to your chosen topic name (e.g. my-prayers-7x3q9). Pick something unique and hard to guess — anyone who knows the topic name can subscribe and read your notifications, so avoid obvious names like prayer.
3. Open Prayer Journal in the browser and click 🔔 Notifications in the header
4. Enter the same topic name and configure:
   • Daily digest time — receive a list of all active prayers at this time each day (leave blank to disable)
   • Per-prayer reminder time — the time of day individual prayer reminders fire
5. Click "Send test" to verify everything is working

Per-prayer reminders

On any active prayer card, expand it and use the 🔔 Remind me row to pick which days of the week you want a reminder for that prayer. The reminder fires at the per-prayer reminder time configured in settings.

No account required

ntfy.sh is a free public service — no sign-up needed. The app POSTs to https://ntfy.sh/<your-topic> and your phone subscribes to the same URL. Self-hosting is optional.

Self-hosted ntfy

If you run your own ntfy server, enter the full URL as the topic:

https://your-ntfy-server.example.com/my-topic

CI / CD

Pushes to main trigger a GitHub Actions workflow (.github/workflows/docker.yml) that:

1. Builds the Docker image (multi-stage: Node 22 build → Node 22 runtime)
2. Pushes to GitHub Container Registry (ghcr.io/nmemmert/prayer)
3. Tags the image as latest, the branch name, and the short commit SHA

The GITHUB_TOKEN secret is used automatically — no additional secrets required.

Note: Commits made by Claude will appear as "Unverified" on GitHub because they are not GPG-signed. This is expected and does not affect functionality.

Development

npm install
npm start        # React dev server on :3000
node server.js   # API + notification server on :4000

Stack

Layer	Technology
Frontend	React 18, TypeScript
Backend	Node.js, Express
Notifications	ntfy.sh (via node-cron + fetch)
Data	JSON files on a bind-mounted host directory
Images	GitHub Container Registry (ghcr)
CI/CD	GitHub Actions