notes

Notes and folders

This page helps you bring your notes into Memo and keep your own notes there. You can add a folder of Markdown files or an Obsidian vault, search its documents, and write notes about people, messages and projects. Memo only reads your folders: it writes a file only when you export your notes.

There are two kinds of notes:

• Notes from your files. Memo reads them from a folder you choose. To change one, edit the file and import again. Their references look like document:3.
• Notes you write in Memo. They live in the local store and can be about a person, a message, a project or another note. Their references look like note:12.

Add a folder

A folder can be any folder of notes on your computer: project notes, a folder of documents or an Obsidian vault. Memo reads the folder and all the folders inside it.

The easiest way: ask your agent.

Use memo CLI to add my notes folder at /path/to/notes and import it.
Tell me how many notes it found and which files it could not read.

Or run the commands yourself. Replace /path/to/notes with the full path of your folder.

For a folder of ordinary Markdown files:

memo folders add /path/to/notes --format markdown
memo sync --only notes --no-embed

For an Obsidian vault:

memo folders add /path/to/vault --format obsidian
memo sync --only notes --no-embed

memo folders add prints the folder's ID, for example 1. memo sync --only notes reads the notes and reports how many it found:

/path/to/notes: 24 notes, 24 changed, 0 moved, 0 gone

--no-embed skips the preparation for search by meaning, so you do not need the search model to start. Run memo sync --only notes again after you add or edit files; only the changes are read.

You can add more than one folder. memo folders list shows them all.

Markdown or Obsidian

The format tells Memo how links and tags are written in your notes. You do not need Obsidian to use Memo, and Obsidian does not need to be open.

	markdown	obsidian (the default)
Links to other notes	Markdown links to the file (below)	[[Other note]], [[Other note|label]], also with #heading
Tags	the tags: field at the top of the file	the tags: field and #tags in the text
Other names for a note		the aliases: field

A link in a markdown folder looks like this:

[label](other-note.md)

In a markdown folder, a #word in the text is not a tag. Both formats understand links written as references, such as [Kai](person:7) or a bare msg:telegram/1/77/42.

An Obsidian vault is a folder of Markdown notes that Obsidian opens as one workspace. Memo skips hidden folders such as .obsidian.

Files Memo can read

Files	Extensions	What Memo keeps
Text and Markdown	.txt, .md, .markdown	The text, links and tags
Tables	.csv, .tsv, .xlsx, .ods	Cell values, with the sheet, row and column
Documents, slides and e-books	.odt, .pptx, .epub	The text, without the layout
PDF and Word	.pdf, .docx	The text, with PDF page numbers. Needs the optional readers below

To read PDF and Word files, install the two optional readers next to Memo:

npm install -g unpdf mammoth

Some files cannot be read: scanned PDFs (pictures of pages, with no text in them), old .doc and .xls files, and files larger than 50 MB. Memo keeps up to 200,000 characters of each file. The import report lists every file it could not read, and why, so a missing file is never silently left out of search.

Skip some files

To keep some files out of Memo, list them under notes.ignore in the config file. A rule is a path inside the folder, a folder (everything in it is skipped) or a pattern:

{ "notes": { "ignore": ["Journal/Private.md", "Archive", "**/Private*"] } }

memo sync --only notes --ignore Drafts skips a folder for one run only.

Find your notes

memo search notes 'budget'
memo search notes 'budget' --filter 'tag:work'
memo notes show document:3

Each result shows the file and the first matching line. memo notes show shows one note with its tags, the notes it links to and the notes that link to it. See Search for more search words.

Write your own notes

A note you write in Memo can be about a person, a message, a project or another note. Writing it does not send anything to anyone and does not change the message it is about.

Use memo CLI to save a note that Kai Sample prefers morning meetings, linked to Kai on Telegram.
Show me the saved note.

Or yourself:

memo notes add 'Prefers morning meetings' --subject telegram:'Kai Sample'
memo notes list 'about:"telegram:Kai Sample"'

notes list about: lists the notes about a subject and the notes that link it: directly, through a note about it, or by a name two people share. via in --json says which: about, link, through or name. It stands alone in the query; source:internal and text:budget narrow the whole list.

--subject on notes add says what the note is about. Use it more than once for several subjects:

About	Write
A person in a messenger	telegram:'Kai Sample', max:'Kai Sample' or email:kai@example.com (a name or an ID)
One message	its reference, such as msg:telegram/1/77/42
A note or a file	note:12 or document:3
A person, organization, project or task	person:…, organization:…, project:…, task:…

Copy references from search results; do not type them from memory. The person, message or note must already be in the local store.

Read, edit and remove a note

memo notes show note:12
memo notes edit 12 --revision 1 --text 'Prefers early morning meetings'
memo notes remove 12

Each note has a revision number that goes up with every edit. memo notes edit asks for the current revision, which memo notes show note:12 --json gives you. If someone or something edited the note in the meantime, the numbers do not match and Memo refuses the edit, so no change is lost. Read the note again and retry.

A note from a file is edited in the file, not with memo notes edit.

Save your notes as files

memo notes export --output-dir /path/to/vault/memo --format obsidian

Export writes the notes you wrote in Memo as Markdown files in the folder you choose. Use --format markdown for plain Markdown. Each file gets a memo-id and a memo-hash at the top, so importing that folder does not create the same note twice. If you edited an exported file yourself, Memo does not overwrite it and tells you. To export one note when you write it, add --export to memo notes add or memo notes edit.

The note about a person

You can tell Memo which file is the main note about a person, for example People/Kai.md in your vault:

memo note telegram:'Kai Sample' /path/to/vault/People/Kai.md
memo note telegram:'Kai Sample'           # shows which note it is
memo note telegram:'Kai Sample' --clear   # forgets it

The file must be imported first. After this, the note and the notes that link to it appear in the person's context. If two people share the name, Memo refuses and lists their IDs so you can choose.

Use the same notes on another computer

If your notes are synchronised to another computer, connect the same folder ID there instead of adding a new folder:

memo folders list                                  # shows the folder IDs the local store has
memo folders attach 1 /other/path/to/notes

With the same ID, the notes keep their links and tags on both computers.

A folder named google-drive:… holds the Google Drive documents drive-cli saved. memo folders list marks it "kept by drive", and memo folders attach refuses it: memo search reads it already.

Next: label your notes with tags, or search them.