Notes: keep what you learn, next to your sites

Work › Notes keeps what's worth writing down: a release checklist, how a webhook behaves, a plan for moving a server. Each note is Markdown, about one of your sites or none, and saved on your computer in Short Leash's database until you delete it. Notes stay plain Markdown, so what you write is exactly what Short Leash's chat, the leash notes command and coding agents read.

Write a note

New note starts one and puts you in its title. The note saves as you type: the header says Saving…, then Saved.

The pill at the top switches between Edit (the Markdown alone), Split (the Markdown beside what it shows, which follows as you scroll) and Preview (the note formatted). Drag the line between Split's halves to resize them. In a narrow window Split isn't offered. Short Leash remembers the mode, the list's width and the panes' sizes.

In Edit and Split, the formatting bar has Heading, Bold, Italic, Code, Link, Bulleted list, Numbered list, Checklist, Quote, Code block, Table and Image, and counts the note's words. Each writes the Markdown for you. Shortcuts (Ctrl instead of ⌘ on Windows):

Enter in a list starts the next item, and Enter on an empty one ends the list. Paste an address over selected words and they become a link. Type [[ for a list of your notes' titles, and # for the tags you already use.

The second line of the header holds the note's site (choose No site for none), its first tags with Add a tag, who wrote it, who last changed it when that was chat or an agent ("Written by you. Changed by Short Leash chat, Tue"), and when it last changed. Pin keeps the note at the top of the list. More has Ask about this note, which opens Short Leash's chat with a question about it begun, Copy as Markdown and Delete, with Undo for a few seconds.

What the preview shows

Split and Preview show headings, tables, strikethrough and code blocks colored by language. A checklist's boxes can be ticked right in the preview, which changes the [ ] in the text. Links to websites ask first: "It opens in your browser. Check the address first."

Details shows a rail beside the preview in wide windows:

• Outline: the note's headings, the one you're reading marked. Click one to go there.
• Linked from: the notes that link to this one.
• Images: the pictures in the note, with their sizes.
• About: words, and when it was created and updated.

Tags and links

A word starting with #, like #deploy or #billing/stripe, is a tag. Tags are read from the text, so there's nothing else to fill in: write the word and the note has the tag, delete it and it's gone. A tag starts with a letter and can hold letters, digits, _, - and /. # Heading, #123, foo#bar and an address's #section aren't tags, and neither is anything in code. Clicking a tag shows every note with it.

[[Server move]] links to the note titled "Server move", and [[Server move|the move]] shows "the move" instead. Titles match without minding case or extra spaces. Click a link in the preview to open that note; when there's none with that title, Short Leash offers Create note. When two notes share a title, the one changed most recently opens. Because links use them, a title can't contain |, [[, ]] or a line break.

Renaming a note updates the [[links]] to it in your other notes, and says how many changed. Links inside code are left alone, and when another note still has the old title, nothing is rewritten.

Pictures

Paste a picture, drop one onto the note, or choose Image to pick one. Notes keep PNG, JPEG, GIF and WebP pictures up to 10 MB, as they came: never resized or re-encoded, so their metadata stays as it was. The note gets a line like ![](leash-image:3f9a….png).

Pictures are kept on your computer, in Short Leash's database folder (db/note-images/), readable only by your user account. They're never sent anywhere: chat and coding agents see a picture's name, not the picture. A picture that no note shows any more is removed 7 days later, which leaves time to paste it back. The preview shows only pictures kept this way; an image from a web address isn't loaded.

Find a note

The list shows Pinned notes, then Recent ones. Each row has the title (with a sparkle when chat or an agent wrote it or last changed it), a line of the note and its site, day and a tag. Sort orders them by Updated, Created or Title. Hide list gives the note the whole window, and Show list brings the list back.

Search notes finds notes with every word you type, each matching the start of a word, ignoring accents, and puts title matches first. Add #deploy to keep only notes with that tag. When that finds nothing, Short Leash looks for the words anywhere in titles and text.

Notes from AI

Short Leash's chat and coding agents can find and read your notes (notes_list, note_read), write new ones (note_add) and change one (note_update), preferably by adding to the end. The chat asks before it writes or changes one, naming the note and showing what it would do. Each note says who wrote it (you, Short Leash chat, or the agent's name) and, when chat or an agent changed its title or text, who did; your next change to it takes that line away.

From the terminal

leash notes list --tag deploy --sort title
leash notes show 3f9a1c2b
leash notes add "Deploy steps" --site shop < steps.md
leash notes edit 3f9a1c2b --append --text "Ran it on staging too."
leash notes edit 3f9a1c2b --title "Server move" --pin
leash notes tags
leash notes rm 3f9a1c2b

leash notes edit replaces the note's text with what you pipe in, or with --text; add --append to add it at the end instead. See the CLI reference.