📝 sn-cli

A modern command-line interface for Standard Notes

✨ Features

• 📋 Notes & Tasks: Create, edit, and manage notes and checklists
• 🔍 Full-Text Search: Search across titles and content with fuzzy matching and regex support
• 📤 Migration: Export to Obsidian with automatic Maps of Content (MOC) generation
• 🏷️ Tags: Organize content with flexible tagging
• 📊 Statistics: Detailed analytics about your notes and usage
• 🔐 Secure Sessions: Keychain integration for macOS and Linux
• ⚡ Fast Sync: Efficient synchronization with Standard Notes servers
• 🔄 Multi-Platform: Windows, macOS, and Linux support

🚀 Quick Start

Installation

Download the latest release:

# macOS/Linux curl -L https://github.com/jonhadfield/sn-cli/releases/latest/download/sncli$(uname -s)$(uname -m) -o sn chmod +x sn && sudo mv sn /usr/local/bin/

Or via direct download
Visit: https://github.com/jonhadfield/sn-cli/releases

First Run

# See all available commands
sn --help
Add a note
sn add note --title "My First Note" --text "Hello, Standard Notes!"
List your notes
sn get notes
View statistics
sn stats

📋 Commands

| Command | Description | |---------|-------------| | add | Add notes, tags, or tasks | | delete | Delete items by title or UUID | | edit | Edit existing notes | | get | Retrieve notes, tags, or tasks | | search | Full-text search across notes (supports fuzzy matching and regex) | | migrate | Migrate notes to other applications (Obsidian, etc.) with MOC generation | | tag | Manage tags and tagging | | task | Manage checklists and advanced checklists | | stats | Display detailed statistics | | session | Manage stored sessions | | register | Register a new Standard Notes account | | resync | Refresh local cache | | wipe | Delete all notes and tags |

Note: Export and import are temporarily disabled due to recent Standard Notes API changes

🔐 Authentication

Environment Variables

export SN_EMAIL="your-email@example.com"
export SN_PASSWORD="your-password"
export SN_SERVER="https://api.standardnotes.com"  # Optional for self-hosted

Session Storage (Recommended)

# Add session (supports 2FA)
sn session --add
Add encrypted session
sn session --add --session-key
Use session automatically
export SNUSESESSION=true
or
sn --use-session get notes

🆕 Recent Updates

Version 0.4.1 (2026-01-30)

• 🔐 Fixed: Authentication issues with updated dependencies
• 🏷️ Improved: Tag cloud visualization with offline support
• 🛡️ Enhanced: Network error handling and graceful degradation
• 🐛 Fixed: Tag reference matching and display issues

Version 0.4.0 (2026-01-29)

• 💾 Added: Backup and restore functionality
• 📤 Added: Enhanced export with multiple formats
• 🎨 Added: Tag cloud visualization
• 📝 Added: Note templates system

💡 Examples

# Create a note with tags
sn add note --title "Meeting Notes" --text "Important discussion points" --tag work,meetings
Find notes by tag
sn get notes --tag work
Search for notes (searches both title and content)
sn search --query "meeting"
Fuzzy search with limit
sn search --query "mtng" --fuzzy --limit 5
Case-sensitive regex search
sn search --query "TODO|FIXME" --regex --case-sensitive
Search within specific tags
sn search --query "project" --tag work
Create a checklist
sn add task --title "Todo List" --text "- Buy groceries\n- Call dentist\n- Finish project"
View your note statistics
sn stats
Edit a note
sn edit note --title "Meeting Notes" --text "Updated content"

🔍 Search Feature

The search command provides powerful full-text search across all your notes:

Basic Usage:

# Simple search sn search --query "keyword" sn search -q "keyword"  # Short form

Search Options:

--query, -q     Search query (required) --content, -c   Search in note content (default: true) --fuzzy, -f     Enable fuzzy matching for typo tolerance --case-sensitive  Make search case-sensitive (default: false) --tag           Filter results by tag --limit, -l     Limit number of results (default: unlimited) --output        Output format: table, rich, json, yaml (default: table)

Advanced Examples:

# Regex pattern matching sn search -q "bug-[0-9]+" --regex

Fuzzy search (matches similar terms)
sn search -q "imprtant" --fuzzy
Case-sensitive search in work-tagged notes
sn search -q "Project" --case-sensitive --tag work
Get top 10 results in rich format
sn search -q "todo" --limit 10 --output rich
Search only in titles (faster)
sn search -q "meeting" --content=false

Search Features:

• Searches both note titles and content by default
• Highlights matching terms in results
• Shows context snippets around matches
• Sorts results by relevance (title matches score higher)
• Supports multiple output formats with syntax highlighting

📤 Migration to Other Applications

Export your notes to other platforms with intelligent organization:

# Basic export to Obsidian
sn migrate obsidian --output ./my-vault
Export with automatic MOC generation
sn migrate obsidian --output ./vault --moc
Export specific tags only
sn migrate obsidian --output ./vault --tag-filter work,projects
Preview migration without writing files
sn migrate obsidian --output ./vault --dry-run

Features:

• Automatic MOC (Maps of Content) generation
• Tag preservation in YAML frontmatter
• Metadata preservation (dates, UUIDs)
• Multiple organizational styles
• Wikilink formatting

my-vault/ ├── Home.md              # Main entry point ├── Work MOC.md          # Category MOCs ├── Learning MOC.md └── ... (all your notes)

⚙️ Advanced Configuration

Shell Completion

Tab completion is available for Bash, Zsh, Fish, and PowerShell.

Quick Install (Bash on macOS):

brew install bash-completion@2 sudo cp autocomplete/bashautocomplete /usr/local/etc/bashcompletion.d/sncli echo '[ -f /usr/local/etc/bashcompletion ] && . /usr/local/etc/bashcompletion' >> ~/.bash_profile source ~/.bash_profile

Quick Install (Fish):

mkdir -p ~/.config/fish/completions cp autocomplete/fish_autocomplete.fish ~/.config/fish/completions/sncli.fish

📖 For detailed installation instructions for all shells, see autocomplete/README.md

Self-Hosted Servers

export SN_SERVER="https://your-standardnotes-server.com"

🔧 Development

# Build from source
git clone https://github.com/jonhadfield/sn-cli.git
cd sn-cli
make build
Run tests
make test
View all make targets
make help

⚠️ Known Issues

• New accounts registered via sn-cli require initial login through the official web/desktop app to initialize encryption keys

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please read our Contributing Guide for details on our code of conduct and the process for submitting pull requests.

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

🔗 Links

• Standard Notes - The note-taking app this CLI supports
• Releases - Download the latest version
• Issues - Report bugs or request features