gote

A CLI note-taking tool written in Go. Notes are plain Markdown files with tagging, pinning, search, and more.

Everything gote knows lives in two places: your notes, which are ordinary .md files in a directory you pick, and ~/.gote, which holds the index and nothing you would miss. Delete gote tomorrow and you still have a folder of Markdown.

Why another one

There are a lot of note CLIs. What is specific to this one:

• Tags are the first line of the file, period-delimited (.project.urgent.work). No YAML frontmatter, no database — a note stays readable and greppable in any editor.
• Search is built in, not shelled out. BM25 ranking with Snowball stemming, compiled into the binary. No ripgrep, fzf or external index required.
• One static binary, no runtime. Nothing to install alongside it.
• Two-letter commands compose a lister with an action. ro is recent + open, sv is search + view, tp is tag-filter + pin.

It is a single-user tool for people who already live in a terminal. There is no sync, no mobile app, no web UI, and no plugin system.

What it looks like

$ gote r
[a] gopl
[s] standup
[d] index_format
[f] search_design
[g] sourdough

(1/1)────────────────────────
[q]uit
[o]pen (default) [v]iew [d]elete [r]ename [c]opy [p]in [i]nfo
: a

$ gote s bm25
[a] search_design
[s] standup

(1/1)────────────────────────
[q]uit
[o]pen (default) [v]iew [d]elete [r]ename [c]opy [p]in [i]nfo
: v

$ gote t
design (2)
meeting (1)
personal (1)
reading (1)
recipe (1)
work (3)

Selection keys are the home row — a s d f g — so picking the third result never means reaching for a number key or an arrow.

A recorded walkthrough can be regenerated with vhs scripts/demo.tape.

Install

Download a binary from releases:

# macOS (Apple Silicon); swap for -mac-amd64, -linux-amd64, -linux-arm64, -win.exe
curl -L -o gote https://github.com/banorton/gote/releases/latest/download/gote-mac-arm64
chmod +x gote
mv gote /usr/local/bin/

With Go installed:

go install github.com/banorton/gote@latest

From source:

git clone https://github.com/banorton/gote && cd gote
go build -o gote . && mv gote /usr/local/bin/

Commands

Examples

gote mynote              # create/open note
gote -d mynote           # with date prefix
gote mynote -t meeting   # from template

gote r                   # recent notes
gote ro                  # recent + open mode

gote s meeting           # search titles + content
gote s --title meeting   # title-only search
gote s -t .work          # search by tag
gote s -w 2412           # notes from Dec 2024
gote s -w 2412 2501      # date range

gote t .work.urgent      # filter by tags
gote p                   # pinned menu
gote g                   # interactive select

Configuration

Config at ~/.gote/config.json:

{
  "noteDir": "/path/to/notes",
  "editor": "vim",
  "fancyUI": false,
  "timestampNotes": "none",
  "defaultPageSize": 10
}

Tags

First line of note, period-separated:

.project.urgent.work

Data

License

MIT