NN (New Note)

NN is a tiny CLI tool that allows you to capture thoughts quickly. In short, nn without arguments launches $EDITOR with a new file that has a timestamp and a title row, in Markdown, in a designated inbox (by default ~/NewNotes/) The file's name is simply an incrementing number if not changed.

If you do not change anything in the file opened, NN will delete the file to avoid spamming your inbox with stuff you accidentally triggered.

Naming files.

Giving NN args will change the naming of your file from an incrementing number to the args you gave it. Call nn foo bar baz and you get a file named foo-bar-baz.md

Alternatively, you can edit the title line (The # bit in the first line), and it will get extracted and used no matter what you called nn with.

Pipes

As means to take a look at outputs later, NN supports pipes: echo "hello!" | nn test will result in a file named test.md in your inbox, with contents hello!. Using NN in a pipe does not generate a headline or date-stamp, just the things you piped into it.

Configuration

There's a config file at ~/.config/nn, which is simple JSON, specifying the inbox path and the current counter that is used for unnamed notes.

The inbox path has to be an absolute path, becaue I didn't want to deal with shell expansion.

The counter is there so you can reset it programmatically if you process your inboxes, if you want to. I enjoy having it rise indefinitely.