notes-automation-workflows

Notes Automation Workflows

Use this skill for scripted, repeatable Apple Notes operations that go beyond single-note edits.

When to use

• "Review my notes from last N days" or periodic cleanup/triage tasks.
• Adding structured summaries to notes that contain links.
• Adding summaries for image/photo notes.
• Updating notes programmatically without manual, one-by-one edits.
• Creating a translated or otherwise transformed copy of a rich-text note while preserving its structure.

When not to use

• Single small edits: use the memo/Notes interactive flow directly.
• Sensitive credential text cleanup: use explicit user confirmation before summarizing.
• Non-Apple notes sources (Obsidian, Notion, etc.)

Prerequisites

• macOS Notes.app
• osascript available
• User has granted Automation access to Notes.app in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Automation
• Apple Notes has the target notes in a reachable account (usually iCloud)

memo CLI reliability

The memo CLI tool frequently breaks after Homebrew/Python updates due to a stale interpreter path. Diagnose with /opt/homebrew/bin/memo 2>&1 — typical error: bad interpreter: No such file or directory. Fix via brew uninstall memo && brew install antoniorodr/memo/memo. When broken, fall through entirely to AppleScript (see search section below).

Searching notes reliably

Title-only AppleScript query is the fastest, most reliable search method. Use before any other approach:

# Search by title only — instant even with thousands of notes
osascript -e 'tell application "Notes" to get name of every note whose name contains "keyword"'

# Retrieve title + body of a single matched note (use sparingly)
osascript -e 'tell application "Notes" to set target to first note whose name contains "keyword"' \
 -e '{name:name of target, body:(body of target)}'

Critical timing constraint: Body access (body of n) iterated across every note in a large account times out at 30s. Title-only search has no this problem. Restrict full-body iteration to single-note retrieval or folder-scoped queries.