makenote-cli 1.2.0

Fast terminal note logging to GitHub

makenote

Fast terminal note logging to GitHub. Log notes from your terminal and store them as JSONL files in a GitHub repo — no database, no server, just gh and Git.

Why

Developers do a lot — shipped features, fixed bugs, unblocked teammates, learned something new — and most of it goes unrecorded. Come performance review time, or when updating your resume, that work is hard to reconstruct.

makenote is a lightweight habit for capturing those moments as they happen. A two-second note from the terminal is low enough friction to actually stick. Over time, your notes become a running log of your progress and impact, stored in a GitHub repo you already own and can query however you like.

How it works

mn appends timestamped notes to notes/<subject>/notes.jsonl in a GitHub repo you configure. Notes are stored as newline-delimited JSON records and written directly via the GitHub Contents API (through the gh CLI).

Requirements

• Python 3.9+
• gh CLI — authenticated (gh auth login)
• A GitHub repo to store your notes in

Installation

Homebrew (recommended)

brew tap hfinchy12/tap
brew install makenote

pip

pip install makenote-cli

Or, using pipx (recommended for CLI tools):

pipx install makenote-cli

Setup

On first run, mn launches an interactive config wizard:

mn

Or run it explicitly at any time:

mn config

You'll be prompted to set:

• GitHub repo — the owner/repo where notes will be stored
• Subjects — categories for your notes (e.g. work, ideas, todo)
• Default subject — used by mn d for fast logging

Config is saved to ~/.config/makenote/config.json.

Usage

Interactive note (with subject picker)

mn

Prompts you to select a subject, then enter your note.

Quick note to default subject

mn d "your note here"

Or without an argument to be prompted:

mn d

Backdating notes

Use --date (or -D) on either mn or mn d to log a note for a past date:

mn d --date yesterday "fixed the login bug"
mn d --date 2026-03-20 "deployed the new API"
mn --date yesterday

Accepts YYYY-MM-DD or the shortcut yesterday. Future dates are rejected.

List recent notes

mn list

Shows the 20 most recent notes across all subjects, sorted newest first.

To filter by a specific subject:

mn list --subject work
mn list -s ideas

Edit config

mn config

Version

mn --version

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. For significant changes, please open an issue first to discuss the approach.

1. Fork the repo
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b my-feature)
3. Make your changes
4. Run the test suite (pytest tests/ -x -q)
5. Open a pull request

License

MIT