joplin-capturing-notes

Capturing notes in Joplin

See the using-joplin skill for the connection check and shared conventions (resolve names to IDs, truncated, delete caution).

Steps

1. Find the target notebook. Call list_notebooks and match the user's intended notebook by title (use the nested tree to disambiguate notebooks with the same name under different parents). If it doesn't exist and the user wants it created, call create_notebook with the title and an optional parent_id to nest it.
2. Choose the format. Default to markdown. Use html only when the content is genuinely HTML (e.g. clipped rich content). The body you pass is stored as-is in that format.
3. Create the note. Call create_note with title, body, format, and notebook_id. Capture the returned note id.
4. Apply tags (separate step). create_note does not take tags. For each desired tag: ensure it exists via list_tags (create it with create_tag if missing), then attach it with tag_note (note id + tag id).
5. Report the created note's id and where it landed.

Diagrams

Joplin renders Mermaid natively inside a fenced ```mermaid block in Markdown notes. Whenever the note includes or would benefit from a diagram (flowchart, sequence, architecture, gantt, ER, etc.), use the mermaid skill to author and validate it, then embed the fenced ```mermaid block in the note body. Requirements:

• The note format must be markdown (step 2) — Mermaid does not render in html notes.
• Never paste hand-written Mermaid you haven't validated; the mermaid skill renders it first so the note doesn't display a syntax error to the user.

Notes

• Don't invent a notebook. If the user didn't name one and none is obvious, ask, or fall back to a clearly-named default only if the user approved that.
• For a quick capture with no notebook specified, it's fine to create/append to a dedicated inbox notebook — but say so.