Notes Skill

Personal notes manager. Notes live in /home/node/.openclaw/workspace/notes/ as markdown files with optional YAML frontmatter.

On the host (VPS) this maps to /root/.openclaw/workspace/notes/ — data persists across container restarts.

Setup

On first use, create the notes directory if it doesn't exist:

mkdir -p /home/node/.openclaw/workspace/notes/ideas
mkdir -p /home/node/.openclaw/workspace/notes/projects
mkdir -p /home/node/.openclaw/workspace/notes/daily
mkdir -p /home/node/.openclaw/workspace/notes/misc

Note format

---
tags: [idea, article]
created: 2026-03-06
---

# Title

Content here.

Frontmatter is optional. If absent, treat the file as plain markdown.

Paths

All paths below use the variable NOTES for brevity:

NOTES=/home/node/.openclaw/workspace/notes

Commands

List notes

find $NOTES -name '*.md' -type f | sed "s|$NOTES/||" | sort

Search by content

grep -rn --include='*.md' -i 'SEARCH_TERM' $NOTES/

Search by tag

grep -rl --include='*.md' 'tags:.*TAGNAME' $NOTES/

Read a note

cat $NOTES/PATH_TO_NOTE.md

Create a new note

1. Generate a slug from the title (lowercase, hyphens, no special chars).
2. Add YAML frontmatter with tags and created (today's date).
3. Write to the appropriate subdirectory.

cat > $NOTES/SUBDIR/SLUG.md \x3C\x3C 'EOF'
---
tags: [tag1, tag2]
created: YYYY-MM-DD
---

# Title

Content
EOF

Append to an existing note

echo -e "\
## New section\
\
Content to add" >> $NOTES/PATH_TO_NOTE.md

Daily quick note

For quick thoughts without a full note, append to today's daily file:

mkdir -p $NOTES/daily
FILE=$NOTES/daily/$(date +%Y-%m-%d).md
[ -f "$FILE" ] || echo "# $(date +%Y-%m-%d)" > "$FILE"
echo "- $(date +%H:%M) — Quick thought here" >> "$FILE"

Behavior guidelines

• When creating notes, confirm the title and tags with the user unless the request is unambiguous.
• When searching, show matching filenames and a brief context snippet.
• Keep file names short and descriptive: gpu-price-tracking.md, not note-about-tracking-gpu-prices-over-time.md.
• Never delete notes without explicit confirmation.
• When listing, show relative paths from the notes root for readability.