Skill

Review

Audit score 70

bear-notes

steipete/clawdis

Create, search, and manage Bear notes via grizzly CLI on macOS.

What is bear-notes?

A skill for interacting with Bear notes through the grizzly command-line tool. Use it to create notes, search by tag, append content, and retrieve note data on macOS systems where Bear is installed.

Create new notes with titles and tags
Search and filter notes by tag
Append text to existing notes
List all tags in your Bear library
Open and read notes by ID
Output results as JSON for programmatic use

How to install bear-notes

npx skills add https://github.com/steipete/clawdis --skill bear-notes

Prerequisites

Bear app installed and running on macOS
grizzly CLI tool (installed via Go)
Bear API token stored in ~/.config/grizzly/token (required for add-text, tags, and selected note operations)

Claude Code

Cursor

Windsurf

Cline

How to use bear-notes

1.Install grizzly via the provided Go installer
2.Obtain your Bear API token from Bear → Help → API Token → Copy Token
3.Save the token: echo 'YOUR_TOKEN' > ~/.config/grizzly/token
4.Use grizzly commands to create notes: echo 'content' | grizzly create --title 'Title' --tag tagname
5.Search notes by tag: grizzly open-tag --name 'tagname' --enable-callback --json
6.Append to notes: echo 'text' | grizzly add-text --id 'NOTE_ID' --mode append --token-file ~/.config/grizzly/token

Use cases

Good for

Automatically create timestamped notes from agent workflows
Search notes by tag to retrieve context or reference material
Append agent-generated summaries or findings to existing notes
Integrate Bear as a persistent knowledge store for multi-turn conversations
Export note data as JSON for further processing

Who it's for

macOS users with Bear app installed
Developers building note-taking automation
Knowledge workers managing tagged note systems

bear-notes FAQ

Do I need a Bear API token for all operations?

No. Token is required only for add-text, tags, and open-note --selected. Basic create and open-tag operations work without it.

How do I find a note's ID?

Note IDs are Bear's internal identifiers. You can find them in note info or by using callbacks with --enable-callback --json when opening notes.

What if Bear is not running?

Grizzly commands will fail if Bear is not running. Ensure the Bear app is open before executing commands.

Can I configure grizzly defaults?

Yes. Create ~/.config/grizzly/config.toml or .grizzly.toml in your working directory to set token_file, callback_url, and timeout defaults.

How do I get JSON output from Bear?

Use --enable-callback --json flags together. This waits for Bear's response and formats it as JSON.

Full instructions (SKILL.md)

Source of truth, from steipete/clawdis.

name: bear-notes description: "Create, search, and manage Bear notes via grizzly CLI." homepage: https://bear.app metadata: { "openclaw": { "emoji": "🐻", "os": ["darwin"], "requires": { "bins": ["grizzly"] }, "install": [ { "id": "go", "kind": "go", "module": "github.com/tylerwince/grizzly/cmd/grizzly@latest", "bins": ["grizzly"], "label": "Install grizzly (go)", }, ], }, }

Bear Notes

Use grizzly to create, read, and manage notes in Bear on macOS.

Requirements

Bear app installed and running
For some operations (add-text, tags, open-note --selected), a Bear app token (stored in ~/.config/grizzly/token)

Getting a Bear Token

For operations that require a token (add-text, tags, open-note --selected), you need an authentication token:

Open Bear -> Help -> API Token -> Copy Token
Save it: echo "YOUR_TOKEN" > ~/.config/grizzly/token

Common Commands

Create a note

echo "Note content here" | grizzly create --title "My Note" --tag work
grizzly create --title "Quick Note" --tag inbox < /dev/null

Open/read a note by ID

grizzly open-note --id "NOTE_ID" --enable-callback --json

Append text to a note

echo "Additional content" | grizzly add-text --id "NOTE_ID" --mode append --token-file ~/.config/grizzly/token

List all tags

grizzly tags --enable-callback --json --token-file ~/.config/grizzly/token

Search notes (via open-tag)

grizzly open-tag --name "work" --enable-callback --json

Options

Common flags:

--dry-run - Preview the URL without executing
--print-url - Show the x-callback-url
--enable-callback - Wait for Bear's response (needed for reading data)
--json - Output as JSON (when using callbacks)
--token-file PATH - Path to Bear API token file

Configuration

Grizzly reads config from (in priority order):

CLI flags
Environment variables (GRIZZLY_TOKEN_FILE, GRIZZLY_CALLBACK_URL, GRIZZLY_TIMEOUT)
.grizzly.toml in current directory
~/.config/grizzly/config.toml

Example ~/.config/grizzly/config.toml:

token_file = "~/.config/grizzly/token"
callback_url = "http://127.0.0.1:42123/success"
timeout = "5s"

Notes

Bear must be running for commands to work
Note IDs are Bear's internal identifiers (visible in note info or via callbacks)
Use --enable-callback when you need to read data back from Bear
Some operations require a valid token (add-text, tags, open-note --selected)