bear-cli

bear-cli is a native Rust CLI for Bear.app on macOS.

It reads Bear's local SQLite database in read-only mode. It sends write and UI actions through Bear's bear://x-callback-url/... scheme.

Usage

bear --help
bear open-note --title "My Note"
bear search crypto
bear create "hello" --title "CLI test" --tag rust

Requirements

• macOS
• Bear.app installed
• local access to Bear's database under a Bear group container such as:

~/Library/Group Containers/<TEAM_ID>.net.shinyfrog.bear/Application Data/database.sqlite

By default bear-cli discovers this dynamically. You only need --database or BEAR_DATABASE if you want to override it.

Installation

From crates.io

cargo install bear-cli

From source

git clone https://github.com/BIRSAx2/bear-cli
cd bear-cli
cargo install --path .

The installed binary name is bear.

Read commands

These commands read Bear's local SQLite database directly:

• open-note
• tags
• open-tag
• search
• untagged
• todo
• today
• locked

Examples:

bear open-note --id 721FF116-185F-4474-8730-60D29995A4A4
bear open-note --title "Systems Security"
bear search Systems
bear open-tag work
bear tags

Write and action commands

These commands ask Bear.app itself to perform the action through its URL scheme:

• create
• add-text
• add-file
• grab-url
• trash
• archive
• rename-tag
• delete-tag
• raw

Examples:

bear create "hello world" --title "Scratch"
bear add-text "append me" --title "Scratch"
bear add-file ./note.txt --title "Scratch"
bear grab-url https://example.com --tag inbox --wait
bear archive --id ABCD-1234
bear trash --search old
bear rename-tag inbox archive/inbox
bear delete-tag old-tag

Authentication

Some Bear x-callback actions support an API token. Save it once with:

bear auth YOUR_BEAR_API_TOKEN

The saved token currently matters most for raw:

bear raw open-tag name=work --use-saved-token
bear raw tags --use-saved-token
bear raw open-note selected=yes --use-saved-token

You can also pass a token explicitly:

bear raw tags --token YOUR_BEAR_API_TOKEN

Notes

• macOS only
• Bear must be installed for write/action commands
• write commands currently launch Bear successfully but do not capture x-callback return payloads back into the terminal
• read commands reflect Bear's local database state, not remote sync state
• encrypted and locked notes are intentionally filtered from several list/search commands

Development

cargo fmt --all
cargo test
cargo clippy --all-targets --all-features -- -D warnings
cargo package --allow-dirty