A command for attaching notes to local files or adding and reading annotations inside PDF files.

Use it to add or list notes for any local file, or list and add text annotations on PDF pages.

It lets you keep explanations beside files without changing ordinary files, while PDF annotations are stored in the PDF itself.

note-file — Command for Claude Code by coltonbearden/carrel

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/coltonbearden/carrel

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install carrel-organize, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 7 commands.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/coltonbearden/carrel/note-file/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/commands/coltonbearden/carrel/note-file)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/commands/coltonbearden/carrel/note-file"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/coltonbearden/carrel/note-file/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/commands/coltonbearden/carrel/note-file"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/coltonbearden/carrel/note-file.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 18 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.

When invoked 853 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00018	$0.00853
Opus 5.5	$0.00007	$0.00341
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00004	$0.00171
Haiku 4.5	$0.00002	$0.00085

Measured 1mo ago against content hash 37414e5ce6a8, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

note-file scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 1mo ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

plugins/carrel-organize/commands/note-file.md · 84 lines

What it actually says

Handle this file-note request: $ARGUMENTS

Run the carrel CLI via Bash. carrel note is a group; map the user's request onto the real subcommands and flags in the --help blocks below (regenerated from the CLI by scripts/sync_plugins.py; if the installed carrel note --help differs, trust the installed version — never invent flags):

Usage: carrel note [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  Attach notes to files (desk db) and annotations to PDFs (pypdf).

Options:
  --json  Machine-readable JSON output.
  --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  add      Attach TEXT as a sidecar note to PATH (stored in the desk db).
  ls       List PATH's sidecar notes, newest first (ISO timestamps).
  pdf      List PATH's PDF annotations: page, subtype, contents.
  pdf-add  Add TEXT as a FreeText annotation to a PDF page.

Usage: carrel note add [OPTIONS] PATH TEXT

  Attach TEXT as a sidecar note to PATH (stored in the desk db).

Options:
  --json  Machine-readable JSON output.
  --help  Show this message and exit.

Usage: carrel note ls [OPTIONS] PATH

  List PATH's sidecar notes, newest first (ISO timestamps).

Options:
  --json  Machine-readable JSON output.
  --help  Show this message and exit.

Usage: carrel note pdf [OPTIONS] PATH

  List PATH's PDF annotations: page, subtype, contents.

Options:
  --json  Machine-readable JSON output.
  --help  Show this message and exit.

Usage: carrel note pdf-add [OPTIONS] PATH TEXT

  Add TEXT as a FreeText annotation to a PDF page.

  The result is verified by reading the output back with pypdf and checking the annotation is listed
  (same reader the `pdf` subcommand uses).

Options:
  --page INTEGER  1-based page to annotate.  [default: 1]
  --pos X,Y       Lower-left corner of the note box in PDF points.  [default: 72,72]
  -o, --out FILE  Output PDF (default: PATH with an .annotated.pdf suffix; pass PATH itself to
                  annotate in place).
  --json          Machine-readable JSON output.
  --help          Show this message and exit.

Sidecar notes (add/ls) work for any file and never modify it — the note lives in .carrel/carrel.db under the global --root (default cwd; carrel --root DIR note add ...).
PDF annotations (pdf/pdf-add) live inside the PDF itself. pdf-add writes PATH.annotated.pdf by default; pass -o PATH only when the user explicitly wants the original annotated in place. --page is 1-based, --pos X,Y is the lower-left corner in PDF points.
Choose from intent: "note on this file" → add; "what did I note" → ls; "annotate this PDF / what's highlighted" → the pdf variants.

Quote TEXT carefully in Bash. Afterwards confirm what was attached, or present the listed notes/annotations with their timestamps/pages.

Requires the carrel CLI on PATH. If carrel is not found, tell the user to install it with uv tool install carrel (see the repo's INSTALL notes), or run it as uv run carrel ... from the carrel repo root.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

1mo ago Changed · +59 lines 37414e5ce6a8
1mo ago Changed c9af786bde8b
1mo ago First seen · 25 lines · 18 tokens per session scan A c718b9ac1f04

Subscribe to this mod's changes

note-file is a command published in the GitHub repository coltonbearden/carrel (2 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 18 tokens to every session and 853 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

Claude Code Documents PDF claude-code-plugins cli file-management mcp ocr

note-file

Getting it into your agent

Wrote this? Show the measurements

What it costs to keep this loaded

Grade A, and why

Nothing flagged

What it actually says

What this file has done since we first saw it

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