Agendactl

macOS Calendar & Reminders automation (agendactl)

Drive macOS Calendar and Reminders by calling the agendactl CLI. Only call commands and pass arguments — authorization, time zones, stable ids, and validation (end > start, etc.) are all handled inside the CLI. Whatever the CLI does not expose is simply not available; do not route around it by writing scripts.

Running agendactl

The binary ships inside this skill at scripts/agendactl. Resolve it in this order:

1. If agendactl is on PATH, just call agendactl.
2. Otherwise, run the bundled binary using this skill's own directory — the absolute path of the folder this SKILL.md was loaded from — e.g. ~/.claude/skills/agendactl/scripts/agendactl or ~/.pi/agent/skills/agendactl/scripts/agendactl. Resolve scripts/agendactl against the skill directory, NOT against the current working directory (the cwd is usually the user's project, not this skill). No install step beyond having the skill folder is required.

Subcommands and flags are identical either way. Do not find the whole disk for it, and do not substitute another tool (Google Calendar, Outlook, Feishu/Lark, or a separate task app): this drives the Apple Calendar.app / Reminders.app on this Mac (iCloud-synced), and only agendactl reads that data.

Design notes (read first)

• Responses carry meta. Every agendactl response has _at / _tz / _iso / _note at the top level. _at is the moment the CLI ran (meta), NOT the item's start/end/due time. The underscore prefix marks meta; bare names are data. _note spells this out.
• Get "today" from the response, not from context. When the user says "today / tonight / tomorrow", read the date from any agendactl response's ._iso field (e.g. 2026-06-29). Do not call date for it and do not guess — the host's reported "today" can be stale or wrong, and writing an event to yesterday drops it out of the calendar view.
• CLI-only. Only call agendactl <app> … with arguments. Never write code; never use osascript/AppleScript/JXA or touch EventKit directly — for macOS Calendar/Reminders, agendactl is the tool, even for a one-liner. If something is not reachable, say "not supported yet" rather than inventing it.
• List the containers before writing. Run calendars / lists first to get the real container names (the response also returns _iso, handy for building "today").

Calendar vs Reminders — route correctly

• Concept. CALENDAR = a schedule entry (meeting/event, has a start/end interval, has location/notes, has no "complete" concept — it exists or it is deleted). REMINDERS = a to-do (has a due time, can be completed).

• Go to calendar when the user says "add a meeting" / "what's on this week" / "3–4pm" (an interval) / "cancel that event" / anything with a start–end span.

• Go to reminders when the user says "remind me" / "to-do" / "mark complete" / "what do I have to do today" / any to-do concept.

• Easy to confuse:

  • "What's on this week" / "what meetings this week" → calendar (a schedule).
  • "What do I have to do today" / "today's to-dos" → reminders (things to do).
  • "Meeting at 3 tomorrow" → calendar (a meeting, an interval).
  • "Remind me to be at the 3pm meeting" → reminders (the user said "remind" = a to-do not to forget; do not also create a calendar event).

• Command map (same verbs, different prefix — don't cross them):

  action	calendar	reminders
  list containers	agendactl calendar calendars	agendactl reminders lists
  list items	agendactl calendar list-events	agendactl reminders list
  create	agendactl calendar create-event	agendactl reminders create
  update	agendactl calendar update-event <id>	agendactl reminders update <id>
  complete	(none — events have no "complete"; use delete-event)	agendactl reminders complete <id>
  delete	agendactl calendar delete-event <id>	agendactl reminders delete <id>

Calendar commands

<id> comes from list-events / create-event. --end must be later than --start (else exit 1); when changing only one end, keep the order valid.

Reminders commands

Priority: 0=none, 1–4=high, 5=medium, 6–9=low (Apple's convention). --status defaults to incomplete.

Dates

• Input ISO 8601: 2026-06-29T09:00:00 (no tz suffix = local time); 2026-06-29 is also accepted. Output is UTC ISO (with Z).
• For relative dates ("today / tomorrow / the day after"), first read ._iso from any response for "today", then do calendar arithmetic with macOS BSD date — date -j -f "%Y-%m-%d" -v+1d "$ISO" +%Y-%m-%d for "tomorrow" (note: BSD -j -f -v, not GNU date -d). agendactl itself accepts only full ISO 8601, never expressions like "tomorrow".

Example — "review tomorrow 3–4pm":

RESP=$(agendactl calendar calendars)                                   # real calendar name (+ _iso)
ISO=$(echo "$RESP" | jq -r ._iso)
CAL=$(echo "$RESP" | jq -r '.items[] | select(.writable) | .name' | head -1)
TOMORROW=$(date -j -f "%Y-%m-%d" -v+1d "$ISO" +%Y-%m-%d)
agendactl calendar create-event --calendar "$CAL" --summary "Review" \
  --start "${TOMORROW}T15:00:00" --end "${TOMORROW}T16:00:00"

Standard workflow (required for writes)

1. List containers first (calendars / lists) to get real names — don't guess ("Personal" vs "个人", duplicate "Holidays" calendars write to the wrong place).
2. Call create / update / complete / delete.
3. Compound filtering (e.g. "events over 1 hour this week", "today's high-priority to-dos"): coarse-filter with --from/--to/--list/--status/--due, then refine in context yourself — the CLI does not do complex queries.
4. After writing, re-read with list / list-events to confirm.
5. Confirm with the user before bulk deletes, then delete one by one.

Exit codes (judge by these, don't guess)

On failure, stderr's first line is agendactl: <reason>.

Not covered (say "not supported yet", don't invent)

• Calendar: attendees/invites, room booking, shared-calendar permissions, recurrence-rule editing.
• Reminders: subtasks, attachments, structured URL/flag read-write.