Bear Notes

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

Bear Notes is a beloved macOS/iOS note-taking app known for its beautiful Markdown editor, tagging system, and clean design. The grizzly CLI brings Bear's capabilities to the terminal via x-callback-url scheme, letting you create notes, append text, search by tags, and read note content. Built by Tyler Wince, grizzly works by constructing Bear's URL scheme commands and executing them. It supports callbacks to read data back from Bear, making it possible to script note creation and retrieval. The CLI can create notes with tags, append content to existing notes, list all tags, and open notes by ID. For OpenClaw users, this means your AI assistant can work with your Bear notes — creating quick captures, appending to running notes, or searching by tag. Bear's Markdown-first approach makes it particularly good for developers and writers who want structured notes with code blocks, links, and formatting. The main caveat: Bear requires a subscription ($30/year) for sync and advanced features, and the grizzly CLI needs a Bear API token for some operations. It's also macOS-only since Bear itself is an Apple ecosystem app. But if you're already a Bear user, grizzly is the missing CLI interface. Best suited for: Bear Notes users who want terminal/AI access to their notes, Markdown-focused note-takers on macOS, developers who prefer Bear's clean interface over Apple Notes.

Tags: notes, bear, macos, productivity

Category: Productivity

Use Cases

  • Quick capture: create tagged notes from AI conversations
  • Append to running notes: add meeting minutes, research findings
  • Search notes by tag for retrieval during conversations
  • Create daily journal entries with date tags
  • Export developer notes with code blocks and Markdown formatting

Tips

  • Get your Bear API token: Bear → Help → API Token → Copy Token
  • Save token to `~/.config/grizzly/token` for automatic auth
  • Always use `--enable-callback --json` when you need to read data back from Bear
  • Use tags for organization instead of folders — Bear's tagging system is its superpower
  • Create a config at `~/.config/grizzly/config.toml` to set defaults for token, callback URL, and timeout
  • Pipe content to grizzly for creating notes from command output: `git log --oneline | grizzly create --title 'Recent Commits' --tag dev`

Known Issues & Gotchas

  • Bear app must be running for any commands to work
  • Some operations (add-text, tags, open-note --selected) require a Bear API token
  • macOS only — no Linux or Windows support
  • Note IDs are Bear's internal identifiers — not human-readable
  • Bear requires a subscription ($30/year) for sync and some features
  • Callback mode (--enable-callback) is needed to read data back — without it, commands are fire-and-forget
  • grizzly timeout defaults may be too short for slow machines — increase with --timeout or GRIZZLY_TIMEOUT

Alternatives

  • Apple Notes (memo)
  • Obsidian (obsidian-cli)
  • Notion (API)
  • Joplin

Community Feedback

Bear's tagging system is what makes it stand out. No folders, just tags — and nested tags work brilliantly for organizing projects.

— Bear Community

grizzly uses x-callback-url to interface with Bear, supporting create, open, add-text, and tag operations with JSON output.

— GitHub

Configuration Examples

Setup grizzly config

mkdir -p ~/.config/grizzly
echo 'YOUR_BEAR_TOKEN' > ~/.config/grizzly/token

# Optional: config.toml
cat > ~/.config/grizzly/config.toml << EOF
token_file = "~/.config/grizzly/token"
callback_url = "http://127.0.0.1:42123/success"
timeout = "5s"
EOF

Create a tagged note

echo "Meeting notes for today" | grizzly create --title "Standup 2026-03-21" --tag work/meetings

Read a note with callback

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

Installation

go install github.com/tylerwince/grizzly/cmd/grizzly@latest

Homepage: https://bear.app

Source: bundled