Noxctl — Terraform-style structure management for Bear Notes

General
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Active development, looking for feedback before the first stable release.

noxctl is a macOS CLI for declaratively managing Bear Notes structure.

The basic idea:

Write normal notes in Bear, describe the desired structure in noxctl.toml, preview with plan, apply when the diff looks right.

Optionally, you can launch a system daemon, which will constantly regenerate the chosen structure.

It is meant for Bear users who like Bear as the writing app, but want a more structured / Obsidian-like workflow around master notes, hub notes, generated indexes, grouped lists, and backlinks. It manages your notes, moc/hub structures automatically, based on which structure you set in config; notes are auto-appended / auto-sorted by alphabet / auto-formatted to the basic style.

Example of what is formatting looks like:

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Repo:

Example:

[meta]
  version = "1"
  locale  = "en"

[[domain]]
  tag         = "library/books"
  index_title = "✱ Books"
  blueprint   = "flat-list"

Workflow:

noxctl validate ~/.config/noxctl/noxctl.toml
noxctl doctor --config ~/.config/noxctl/noxctl.toml
noxctl plan --config ~/.config/noxctl/noxctl.toml
noxctl apply --config ~/.config/noxctl/noxctl.toml

What it does:

  • scans managed Bear tags;
  • generates master / hub notes;
  • stamps a canonical tag-line onto managed notes;
  • keeps generated structure idempotent;
  • can run once or as a daemon with a LaunchAgent (launchctl with Go binary).

Important caveats:

  • pre-1.0;
  • macOS only;
  • Bear only;
  • terminal-oriented;
  • not affiliated with Bear / Shiny Frog;
  • not a backup tool;
  • apply mutates your local Bear database through Bear’s bundled bearcli.

So: back up Bear first, start with one small low-risk tag, inspect plan, then apply.

I’m mainly looking for feedback on the README and the user-facing model:

  • Is the project understandable from the first page?
  • Are the safety warnings clear enough?
  • Does plan → apply make sense for a note app?
  • Is this useful, or too much machinery for Bear?

Any feedback from Bear power users would be very useful. The project is in pre-alpha stage and mostly scratches my own itches, but if it engages with the community, it could be developed into something interesting. I have more ideas.