Bear Notes
Use grizzly to create, read, and manage notes in Bear on macOS.
Requirements
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Bear app installed and running
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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:
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Open Bear → Help → API Token → Copy Token
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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:
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--dry-run — Preview the URL without executing
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--print-url — Show the x-callback-url
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--enable-callback — Wait for Bear's response (needed for reading data)
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--json — Output as JSON (when using callbacks)
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--token-file PATH — Path to Bear API token file
Configuration
Grizzly reads config from (in priority order):
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CLI flags
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Environment variables (GRIZZLY_TOKEN_FILE , GRIZZLY_CALLBACK_URL , GRIZZLY_TIMEOUT )
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.grizzly.toml in current directory
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~/.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
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Bear must be running for commands to work
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Note IDs are Bear's internal identifiers (visible in note info or via callbacks)
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Use --enable-callback when you need to read data back from Bear
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Some operations require a valid token (add-text, tags, open-note --selected)