Apple notes

Skill eins78/agent-skills/skills/apple-notes

Agent skills collection: session management, TypeScript patterns, Chrome CDP, tmux, Apple integrations

Install

npx -y skills add eins78/agent-skills --skill apple-notes

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

One thing to look at

2 stars2 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.

What its author says it does

Copied from the file, not written here

Read Apple Notes via AppleScript. Use when asked to check, search, or read notes. READ ONLY — no creating or modifying notes.

The file declares its own license as MIT. That is the author’s claim about this one file, and it is not the same thing as the license GitHub reports for the repository, which is listed with the other numbers below.

SKILL.md

3.3 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it

Apple Notes (Read Only)

Read notes via Notes.app AppleScript. No creating, updating, or deleting notes.

Prerequisites

Notes.app running and synced
Automation permissions granted (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Automation → Terminal/Claude Code → Notes)
If first access attempt times out, ask user to check for macOS permission dialog

Reliability: always wrap osascript with timeout + retry

Notes.app's AppleScript bridge hangs intermittently. AppleScript-internal with timeout of N seconds does NOT kill a wedged osascript process — wrap with shell-level timeout and retry.

notes_query() {
  local script="$1" attempt
  for attempt in 1 2 3; do
    result=$(timeout 15 osascript -e "$script" 2>&1) && { echo "$result"; return 0; }
    sleep 2
  done
  echo "ERROR: Notes query failed after 3 attempts" >&2
  return 1
}

Reasonable defaults: 15s timeout, 3 retries, 2s sleep. Bump to 30s for full-text search across many notes. If all retries fail, report and move on.

Scripts

List folders

${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/list-folders.sh              # All folders across all accounts
${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/list-folders.sh iCloud       # Only iCloud folders

List notes in a folder

${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/list-notes.sh                        # iCloud/Notes (default)
${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/list-notes.sh "Shopping"             # iCloud/Shopping
${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/list-notes.sh "Notes" "Gmail"        # Gmail/Notes

Output: note name | modification date (one per line)

Read a note

${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/read-note.sh "Shopping List"             # Search all accounts
${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/read-note.sh "Meeting Notes" "iCloud"    # Specific account

Returns metadata header + HTML body.

Search notes by name

${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/search-notes.sh "recipe"                 # Search all accounts
${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/search-notes.sh "recipe" "iCloud"        # Specific account

Output: note name | account/folder | modification date (one per line)

Direct Commands

For quick one-off access without scripts:

# List all iCloud folders
osascript -e 'tell application "Notes" to get name of every folder of account "iCloud"'

# List all note names in a folder
osascript -e 'tell application "Notes" to get name of every note in folder "Notes" of account "iCloud"'

# Read a note body (returns HTML)
osascript -e 'tell application "Notes" to get body of note "Note Name"'

# Count all notes
osascript -e 'tell application "Notes" to count every note'

Notes

Note bodies are returned as HTML — use for display or pipe through a converter for plain text
Note names are case-sensitive in AppleScript queries
Searching large numbers of notes can be slow — scope to a specific account when possible
The whose name contains filter is case-insensitive
Notes.app must be running — scripts will launch it if needed, but sync may take a moment