---

name: notes-archive description: Work with personal notes archive stored in date-based directory structure with Markdown files. Navigate notes by date, ID, or slug. Search content and tags.

Notes Archive Skill

Archive Structure

Location: $NOTES_PATH (defaults to ~/Dropbox/Notes if not set, also accessible via ~/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox/Notes)

Directory Hierarchy:

CopyYYYY/MM/YYYYMMDD_ID[_slug].md

Examples:

• 2026/01/20260106_8823.md - no slug
• 2026/01/20260102_8814_todo.md - with slug
• 2024/12/20241203_6973_disable-letter_opener.md - descriptive slug

ID Tracking: id.json contains {"last_id": 8849}

UID (Unique Identifier): YYYYMMDD_ID - the date+ID prefix uniquely identifies each note

File Format

Naming Pattern: YYYYMMDD_ID[_slug].md

• YYYYMMDD - Date in ISO-8601 basic format
• ID - Sequential number from id.json (zero-padded in old notes 2013-2014, plain integers in modern notes)
• slug - Optional suffix: category (todo, backlog, weekly) or descriptive text

YAML Frontmatter (Optional):

Copy---
title: Note title
date: YYYY-MM-DD
tags: [tag1, tag2, tag3]
slug: short-name
published: true  # For publication to notes.musayev.com
description: Brief description
---

Published Notes: Notes with published: true are included when running publish-notes script (generates HTML → pushes to GitHub Pages).

Content: Standard Markdown. Mixed English/Russian.

Task Syntax (in *_todo.md notes):

• [+] - Completed
• [>] - In progress
• [ ] - Pending

Existing Tooling

User has established scripts and plugins - DO NOT recreate these.

Shell Scripts (~/bin/):

• new-note - Creates note with auto-incremented ID, updates id.json, opens in editor
• latest-note, latest-todo, latest-backlog, latest-weekly - Opens most recent (skips 99999999_* pinned notes)
• commit-notes - Commits with message "Autocomit"

Sublime Text Plugins (~/.dotfiles/config/sublimetext/):

• file_autorename - Renames file based on frontmatter slug field
• notes_browser - Browse notes by tags (shows ALL/UNTAGGED + tag list)
• open_note_reference - Opens note by UID under cursor

Pinned Notes: Files starting with 99999999_* are skipped by latest-* scripts.

Common Search Patterns

Find by ID:

Copyfind . -name "*_8823*.md"

Find by slug:

Copyfind . -name "*_todo.md"
find . -name "*_backlog.md"

Find by date:

Copyls 2026/01/
ls 2026/01/20260106_*.md

Search content:

Copygrep -r "search-term" 2026/
grep -r "^tags:" --include="*.md"

Recent notes:

Copyfind . -type f -name "*.md" -exec stat -f "%m %N" {} \; | sort -rn | head -20

Active tasks:

Copygrep -r "^\[>\]" --include="*_todo.md"

Tag frequency:

Copygrep -rh "^tags:" --include="*.md" | sed 's/tags: \[\(.*\)\]/\1/' | tr ',' '\n' | sed 's/^ *//;s/ *$//' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn

Archive stats:

Copy# Total notes
find . -name "*.md" | wc -l

# By year
for year in [0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]; do
  count=$(find "$year" -name "*.md" 2>/dev/null | wc -l)
  [ $count -gt 0 ] && echo "$year: $count"
done

# Common slugs
find . -name "*_*.md" | sed 's/.*_\([^.]*\)\.md/\1/' | grep -vE '^\d+$' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -10

Key Concepts

Note References: Notes reference each other using UIDs (YYYYMMDD_ID or YYYYMMDD_ID_slug). The open_note_reference plugin navigates these.

Tag Organization: Frontmatter tags used for categorization. notes_browser plugin provides tag-based navigation.

Slug Flexibility: Can be category markers (todo, weekly), descriptive (postgres-debugging), or absent.

Archive Evolution: 17+ years (2009-present), ~8849 notes, git-tracked.

Usage Guidelines

• Focus on search, analysis, and content-level operations
• Use existing scripts for creation/navigation
• Use $NOTES_PATH env var or fallback to ~/Dropbox/Notes
• Archive is git-tracked - use commit-notes to commit
• Preserve frontmatter structure when editing
• UIDs are unique and stable - use for references