textnotes-cli

textnotes-cli is a CLI for your second brain, it is backed by CouchDB with Nouveau full-text search.

Quickstart

(1) Download from the releases page, place it in your path.

(2) Add your credentials to ~/.netrc, example:

machine example.com
  login remoteuser
  password secret

Replace example.com with the correct domain or IP address. In case of an Ip address don't add the protocol or port, only the IP address.

(3) After that index your CouchDB:

textnotes --server-url 'https://example.com/my-db' index

Note:

If you don't want to always use --server-url you can export the environment variable TEXTNOTES_URL with the same content:

export TEXTNOTES_URL=https://example.com/my-db

(4) Use the subcommand new to open your editor with an empty note. Make sure to have VISUAL or EDITOR.

textnotes new

Save and exit your editor. It will output:

Created:
 + Hello World (id: han-914814d805194b1baf00273602a71f22)

You can edit with:

./textnotes edit --id han-914814d805194b1baf00273602a71f22

You can delete with:

./textnotes delete --id han-914814d805194b1baf00273602a71f22

See the list of commands below for wayt to use it, or the example-skills/ directory to use with agents.

Global flags

--format type, output format, type can be human (default) or json

This flag is ignored by new or edit, as these are interactive commands and not intended for scripting.

--server-url https://example.com/my-db address with the database for your CouchDB instance.

If you don't want to always provide --server-url you can export the environment variable TEXTNOTES_URL with the same content.

Commands

Besides the commands below, version and help is also available.

Each subcommand also accepts --help.

list - List all notes

textnotes list
textnotes list --page 1
textnotes --format json list

search - Search notes using FTS

You need to have Nouveau in your CouchDB server, otherwise this will not work.

textnotes search something cool

According to Nouveau, the order of the words does not matter.

read - Read one note

Read one note and output as frontmatter (default) or JSON.

textnotes read --id <id>
textnotes read --title "Hello world"

create - Create one note

Create one note with given attributes, --title is required:

textnotes create \
  --title "My Note" \
  --content "# Hello" \
  --content-type "text/markdown" \
  --categories "single-word-category [[multi word category]]" \
  --url "https://example.com" \
  --fields-entry-klass "Article" \
  --fields-author "Some Author"

Options:

• --title, title (quote if using multiple words or it has special chars)
• --content, body of the note
• --content-type, default text/markdown (saved in CouchDB as content_type)
• --categories, space-separated list of categories use [[multi word]] for categories with space, example: simple-category [[multi word]]
• --url, URL to attach, for your reference only
• --fields-<key> <value>, add some metadata, example: --fields-icon "rocket-icon", --fields-score 5

update - Fully replace a note

Find a note by id and update it.

--id and --title are required. Omitted fields are cleared, example:

textnotes update \
  --id <id> \
  --title "New Title" \
  --content "replaced" --content-type "text/markdown"

Accepts the same parameters as create.

patch - Partial update

Find a note by id and update the parameters given in the CLI.

Only --id is required. Omitted fields are kept as is:

textnotes patch --id <id> --content "replaced"

Accepts the same parameters as create and update.

delete - Delete note by id

textnotes delete --id <id>

Cannot be undone.