📝 sn-cli

February 1, 2026 · View on GitHub

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)

Store encrypted sessions in your system keychain:

# Add session (supports 2FA)
sn session --add

# Add encrypted session
sn session --add --session-key

# Use session automatically
export SN_USE_SESSION=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

View full changelog →

💡 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

Output Structure:

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/bash_autocomplete /usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d/sncli
echo '[ -f /usr/local/etc/bash_completion ] && . /usr/local/etc/bash_completion' >> ~/.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