Apple Notes

Apple Notes

One dispatcher: scripts/apple-notes <subcommand>. AppleScript under the hood. Output is plain text by default, --json available where useful.

Project layout (enforced by init, scanned by all reads)

Firma/                       ← company folder (configurable; default "Firma" in iCloud)
  HellerIO/                  ← one subfolder per app/repo
    inbox/                   ← new, untriaged
    ready/                   ← triaged, ready for work
    done/                    ← merged / shipped
    docs/                    ← templates, briefing, specs — NOT issues
  Whispaste/
    inbox/  ready/  done/  docs/

Title-prefix convention (the only requirement, surfaced by triage): BUG: FEAT: IDEA: FB: (user feedback) TECH: (tech debt / refactor).

Body: free-form text. Non-technical partners write plain prose using the BUG / FEAT / IDEA / FB templates seeded under docs/. Only the TECH template (Silvio's own notes) carries a compact ·-separated metadata first line — agents and triage do not require it for any other prefix.

What each folder means → which one to read

Pick the folder by intent. Crucial: a bare notes <project> lists every status, and search spans every project + status — so neither answers "what's new". Both will surface long-done and ready items as if they were fresh. This is the #1 mistake: do not answer an "incoming" question from search or an unscoped notes.

Default rule: any request about incoming / new / latest / unhandled / untriaged items ⇒ scope to --status inbox. Only widen to ready/done, or fall back to search, when the user explicitly asks for those statuses or for an across-everything lookup. When unsure which folder the user means, ask — don't silently pull from all of them.

Quick start

S=~/.claude/skills/apple-notes/scripts/apple-notes

"$S" init HellerIO            # creates inbox/ready/done/docs + seeds templates+cheatsheet
"$S" resolve                  # auto-map current repo to project (cached)
"$S" notes "$($S resolve)"    # list, grouped by status
"$S" triage HellerIO          # inbox health check (prefix + metadata)
"$S" get HellerIO "BUG: Login flaky"   # plain-text body
"$S" images HellerIO "BUG: Login flaky"  # extract base64 images → JSON paths

Subcommands

Token-efficiency rules

1. Default get format is text — base64 images are placeholders, not the LLM payload.
2. notes lists title + date + 80-char preview, grouped by status.
3. For screenshots: images <project> <title> → temp paths → Read each path (multimodal). Never paste raw base64.
4. search returns the most recent match first; use --project NAME to scope.

Workflows

Verify every write. move, create, update, and init print OK or ERR:…. After any write, check that line — on ERR: surface it and do not report success. For move, confirm by re-listing: apple-notes notes <project> --status <new-status> must now include the note. Never claim a note was moved/created/updated without seeing it land.

Pull issues from a partner-maintained inbox

1. apple-notes triage <project> — see which inbox notes are well-formed.
2. apple-notes notes <project> --status inbox — full list.
3. apple-notes get <project> <title> for content; apple-notes images … for screenshots.
4. Present your assessment and propose apple-notes move <project> <title> ready (acknowledge, will fix) or delete --force (won't fix). Wait for explicit user confirmation before running delete --force — deletion is destructive and the agent must not decide it autonomously.
5. After implementation: apple-notes move <project> <title> done.

Always close the loop on processed inbox notes (standing reminder rule)

Whenever you have acted on one or more inbox notes in a turn — triaged them, diagnosed them, turned them into a plan/PRD, or fixed them — you MUST end that turn by offering to move those specific notes to ready (acknowledged / will-fix). List the affected note titles and ask explicitly, e.g. "Soll ich diese N Notizen nach ready verschieben?".

• This is a standing reminder that fires on every such turn, not a one-off.
• Never move them autonomously. Always wait for explicit confirmation — the user may have only partly processed a note, or may want to revisit it later.
• ready = "acknowledged, will fix". Reserve done for after the work ships, and delete --force (still confirmation-gated) for "won't fix".
• If the user declines or stays silent, leave the notes in inbox and simply re-offer the next time they are processed.

Onboarding a new project

1. Create the project subfolder manually in Apple Notes UI (e.g. Whispaste).
2. apple-notes init Whispaste — folders + templates land.
3. Share the Anleitung: Bugs und Feedback einbringen note (in docs/) with the human collaborator.

Setup

First run creates ~/.config/claude/apple-notes/config.json with defaults:

{
  "account": "iCloud",
  "company_folder": "Firma",
  "statuses": ["inbox", "ready", "done", "docs"],
  "default_status": "inbox",
  "default_image_dir": "/tmp/apple-notes-images"
}

Change with apple-notes config set <key> <value>. Pre-existing configs are gently migrated on every run.

macOS permissions

Claude Code's host terminal must have Automation → Notes enabled in System Settings → Privacy & Security. First invocation triggers the prompt; if denied earlier, toggle it back.

Long titles & truncation

Apple Notes has no separate title field — a note's title is its first body line, truncated to ~64 chars + … once it gets long. So when a collaborator dumps the whole report into the first line (no line break), the listed title is a truncated ellipsis form while the full text lives in the body.

This is handled transparently: get/update/append/move/delete resolve a <title> that is exact, truncated, a prefix, ASCII-..., or a raw note id. For bulletproof addressing across several operations, take the id from notes --json / search --json and pass it as <title>. If two notes collide on a prefix, the command aborts as ambiguous and asks for the id.

To prevent the problem at the source, the seeded Anleitung/templates ask collaborators to keep the first line a short title and put detail in the lines below.

Limitations

• Inline base64 only: only images that Apple Notes stored inline are extractable. Video, audio, PDFs, and richly-linked attachments are flagged in the note body (often as ) but not retrievable via AppleScript.
• Duplicate / prefix-colliding titles: when a title query ties across notes, the command aborts as ambiguous — disambiguate with the note id (from --json) or rename in Apple Notes.
• Status set is configurable but enforced by init + move. Adding a new status: edit config.json statuses array and re-run init.

See REFERENCE.md for AppleScript caveats, exit codes, and full subcommand contracts.