Quick Notes

A scratchpad on the bar: jot something down in two seconds, find it again later. Every note is a plain Markdown file on your disk, so any editor or Obsidian can open the folder. No accounts, no API keys, nothing leaves your computer.

What you see

• Tile: one calm line with the sticky-note icon. By default it shows the title of the pinned note (or the latest one when nothing is pinned); the tileMode setting switches it to always the latest note or to the number of notes.
• Flyout: the heading row with the note count and a "+" button for a larger editor, a quick-note textarea with Save, a filter field, and the list of notes newest first (the pinned note on top). Every row shows the title, a preview of the body, how long ago it was updated, and four icon actions: pin/unpin, copy the full text, edit in a dialog, delete.
• Hover: the first three lines of the pinned (or latest) note.
• Popup: a short "Saved" toast after saving, and a "Deleted" toast with an Undo button that stays for ten seconds.

Requirements

• Nothing beyond smabar. Linux, macOS and Windows.

How it works

• Each note is one file: <data dir>/notes/<YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS>-<random>.md. The first non-empty line is the title (Markdown headings and list markers are stripped for display); the file's modification time is the "updated" time. Files are written atomically, so an editor never sees a half-written note.
• The data dir is smabar's data directory for the plugin, ~/.smabar/data/quick-notes/ on Linux and macOS and %USERPROFILE%\.smabar\data\quick-notes\ on Windows. Point Obsidian or any editor at its notes folder.
• The plugin rescans that folder every 30 seconds. Files you add, edit or remove elsewhere show up on the next scan; any *.md file counts as a note, its file name is the id.
• The pinned note is remembered in pinned.json next to the notes folder, so the Markdown files stay clean.
• Undo after Delete restores the file from a copy the plugin keeps in memory until the next delete or undo.

Agent commands

Coding agents can use the plugin through smabar's MCP server (plugin_commands("quick-notes"), then plugin_call):

Command	Arguments	Returns
notes.add	text	id, title
notes.list	query (optional), limit (optional, default 50)	notes[] with id, title, preview, updated, pinned
notes.search	query, limit (optional)	same as notes.list
notes.get	id	the summary plus the full text
notes.delete	id	deletedId

Adding and deleting through a command shows the same toasts as the flyout, so you can undo an agent's delete too.

Settings

Setting	Default	Meaning
tileMode	pinned	What the tile shows: pinned (the pinned note's title, or the latest one), latest (always the newest note's title), count (the number of notes).

Privacy

Everything stays local. The plugin only reads and writes its own notes folder and pinned.json; it never contacts a server.

Known limits

• One note can be pinned at a time; pinning another note replaces the pin.
• The filter field matches the visible title and preview; the notes.search command searches the full text.
• The "updated" ages in the list refresh when something changes, not every minute.
• A change to the notes folder from outside the bar re-renders the list, which closes an editor dialog that is open at that moment.

Development

python3 test_notes.py runs the store, markup and state-machine self-check without a running bar.

#notes #scratchpad #markdown #obsidian #memo #clipboard #productivity