nix shell 'git+https://tangled.sh/@oppi.li/journal'

It's massive overkill for a shell alias, but for a more complex project it can be very nice.

I guess this does ensure the key `journal` command works exactly the same because the dateutils binary will stay locked to the version in the `flake.lock`.

I would have assumed that nvim would also be locked because that's where I would expect more possible breaking changes with the existing special config.

With little tools/projects like these I could easily see months-years before it would get any active attention from me again (or simply I wouldn't be using it; so it doesn't matter).

You could then just open nvim in the `nix develop` environment (or even use something like direnv to activate it when you cd in) and have a minimal journaling environment

Honest answer though, it's a deterministic way of building up a computer/environment. Think pip/uv/packages.lock but for everything.

What kind of "tweaks" are you doing? You could use `nix-shell` to try out a new environment. If you like it the environment, you can make it declarative by creating a `shell.nix` file.

If you want to go further, you might make consider making a flake, but I would recommend reading https://nix.dev/concepts/flakes.html first.