notesmgr - Managing small notes and AI prompts

What it does

notesmgr is a small desktop application that keeps small notes and AI prompts in order. It is made for the texts you keep coming back to: the prompts you paste into an AI assistant, snippets, checklists, and short notes.

• Notes are ordinary text files in ordinary folders, so they can be kept in git, synced, backed up and edited with any editor.
• The notes of a folder are kept in an order of your choosing, and are reordered with a button, a key or by dragging.
• A note is edited in the editor you already use, such as Visual Studio Code, and the note shown in notesmgr follows as you save.
• Every folder has a template that each new note of the folder starts from.
• A note is copied to the clipboard with one key, either as it is written or formatted, so that pasting it into Mail, Word or Slack keeps headings, lists and bold text.
• Notes written in markdown are shown formatted for reading.

It runs on macOS, Microsoft Windows and Linux.

Installing

notesmgr needs Python 3.12 or newer, with Tk (tkinter). Install it from PyPI:

On macOS and Linux:

pip3 install --upgrade notesmgr

On Microsoft Windows:

pip install --upgrade notesmgr

The Python from python.org has Tk built in on macOS and on Windows. On Linux Tk is often a package of its own, such as python3-tk on Debian and Ubuntu. Copying a note formatted needs xclip (X11) or wl-copy (Wayland) on Linux; without them the note is copied as plain text.

Getting started

1. Start notesmgr.
2. Choose File → New project… and pick a folder. It can be an empty folder or one that already holds notes, which are then taken in.
3. Press New (Cmd+N on mac, Ctrl+N elsewhere), give the note a name, and write it in the editor that opens.
4. Select the note in the tree to the left to read it, and press Copy raw (Cmd+C / Ctrl+C) to put it on the clipboard.

Next time, open the project with File → Open project…, or name it on the command line: notesmgr ~/notes.

Using notesmgr

The main window

To the left is the tree of the project: its folders, and in each folder the template of the folder followed by its notes in their order. Subfolders come first, in alphabetical order.

To the right is the selected note with a row of buttons above it. A note whose name ends with .md or .md.txt is shown formatted, and a note ending with .txt is shown exactly as it is written. When a note is changed by your editor or by any other program, the note shown follows about a second later.

A new note or folder is made in the selected folder, in the folder of the selected note, or in the root folder of the project when nothing is selected.

Buttons and keyboard shortcuts

Every button is also in the Note menu. On mac the shortcuts use Cmd, and on Windows and Linux they use Ctrl.

Button	Shortcut	What it does
Copy raw	Cmd+C	Copies the note as it is written. When part of the note is selected, the key copies just that part.
Copy formatted	Cmd+Shift+C	Copies the note formatted, for pasting into Mail, Word, Slack and the like.
Duplicate	Cmd+D	Copies the note, under a name and into a folder you choose.
Edit	Cmd+E	Opens the note in your editor. Return in the tree does the same.
New	Cmd+N	Makes a note from the template of the folder and opens it in your editor.
Delete	Cmd+Backspace	Moves the note to the trash, after asking.
Up	Cmd+Up	Moves the note one place up.
Down	Cmd+Down	Moves the note one place down.

The other shortcuts are:

Shortcut	What it does
Cmd+Shift+N	Makes a folder (Folder → New folder…).
Cmd++, Cmd+-, Cmd+0	Draws the note and the tree larger, smaller, and in the normal size again (View menu).
Cmd+W on mac, Ctrl+Q elsewhere	Quits.
Tab	Goes from the tree to the buttons and on to the note.

The template of a folder is shown, edited and copied like any note, but it cannot be duplicated, deleted or moved: every folder has exactly one template.

Dragging

Notes and folders can be dragged in the tree. A note dropped above or below another note is moved to that place, and a note dropped on a folder is moved to the end of that folder. A folder dropped on another folder is moved into it with everything it holds. While you drag, a line shows where a note would land and the folder that would take it is marked. Escape gives up the drag. A name that the other folder holds already is refused rather than moved.

Folders

The Folder menu makes, renames and deletes folders of the project. A new folder starts with a copy of the template of the folder above it. A folder can be renamed at any time, and is deleted, to the trash, only when it holds no notes and no folders. The root folder of the project is renamed and deleted outside notesmgr.

Configuration

Configuration → Edit configuration… edits the configuration of the open project, which is stored in notesmgr.cfg in the root folder of the project. It holds:

• editor: the command that opens a note. {file} stands for the note, and the note is put last when the command has no {file}, so code and code {file} mean the same thing. For a new configuration it is Visual Studio Code (code) when that is installed, otherwise the editor that $EDITOR names, otherwise open on mac, Notepad on Windows and emacs elsewhere.
• file_extension: what new notes are called, one of .md.txt (the default), .md and .txt. .md.txt is the default because many systems do not see .md as a safe kind of file.
• max_note_size: how many characters of a note are shown, from 2000 to 100000 and 25000 unless you say otherwise. A longer note is shown up to there, with a warning above it.

A configuration file looks like this:

{
    "editor": "code -n {file}",
    "file_extension": "MD_TXT",
    "max_note_size": 25000
}

Configuration → Save configuration as user wide… makes the configuration of the project the one that every new project starts with. With no project open, Edit configuration… edits that user wide configuration.

Command line

notesmgr [PROJECT_FOLDER]
notesmgr --version

Started with a folder, notesmgr opens the project in it. --version reports the versions of notesmgr and of the packages it uses, and which newer releases there are, just as Help → Version information… does.

Details

This section says what notesmgr does in the cases where you might wonder.

The files of a project

• notesmgr.cfg in the root folder holds the configuration of the project.
• Every folder holds one template, template.md.txt, template.md or template.txt after the file_extension of the project.
• Every folder holds a hidden .notes_order.txt that lists the notes of the folder, one name per line, in the order they are shown. Folders are not listed in it.
• Every other file ending with .txt, .md or .md.txt is a note.

All of these can be edited with any text editor while notesmgr is not looking. Deleting a note, a folder or a template always moves it to the trash of the operating system, so it can be taken back.

What opening a project puts in order

• .notes_order.txt is repaired: names of notes that are gone are removed, and notes it does not name are added at the end in alphabetical order. A folder whose .notes_order.txt cannot be read or written is reported, and its notes are shown in alphabetical order.
• A folder without a template gets one: an empty one in the root folder, and a copy of the template of the folder above it elsewhere.
• A template whose extension is not the file_extension of the project is renamed, and you are told so. Changing file_extension therefore renames the templates the next time the project is opened.
• A folder holding more than one template is the one thing notesmgr cannot decide for you. You are asked which one to keep, and the others go to the trash. Answering nothing leaves every file as it is, and the project is not opened.

What a formatted note shows

Headings, paragraphs, bold, italic, ~~struck through~~ text, code in a line and code blocks, lists nested as deeply as you like, tables, block quotes, horizontal lines, and the text of links. PNG and GIF images next to the note are drawn where the note shows them, and other images are named by their description. HTML in a note is shown as the text it is. A note that is not valid UTF-8 is not shown, and says why.

How Copy formatted works

The note goes on the clipboard as rich text and as plain text, so that an application that takes formatting gets it, and a plain text field gets the note as it is written. A note that is not markdown is copied as preformatted text, so that a table lined up by hand stays lined up. It uses what the operating system already has: textutil and osascript on mac, the Windows clipboard itself, and xclip or wl-copy on Linux. When the tool it needs is missing, the note is copied as plain text and you are told why.

Where the user wide configuration is

It is read from the file that $NOTESMGR_CFG names, when that file exists, otherwise from ~/.notesmgr.cfg, and otherwise the built-in defaults are used. It is written to the file that $NOTESMGR_CFG names, whether that file exists yet or not, and to ~/.notesmgr.cfg when the variable is not set.

What is remembered

Nothing is remembered from one run to the next: not the last project, not the size of the window, and not the size of the text. Within one run, the folder chooser starts in the project opened last.

What notesmgr is built on

notesmgr uses config-as-json and edit-cfg-json-tk for its configuration, markdown for reading notes written in markdown, versionreporter for the version report, argcomplete for the command line, and Send2Trash for moving files to the trash.

Source code

Source code and tests are available at https://github.com/tom-bjorkholm/notesmgr.

Test summary

• Test result: 1489 passed, 13 deselected in 7s
• No flake8 warnings.
• No mypy errors found.
• No pylint warnings.
• No python layout warnings.
• Built version(s): 0.1.0
• Build and test using Python 3.14.7