Alfred PKManager

A handy Alfred Workflow which helps to manage your Personal Knowledge Markdown notes.

Main Features

• Search
  • Search Notes: Search by title, keywords, tags or synonyms (which need to be predefined in YMAL [metadata](#How to set templates?)).
  • Search Snippets: Search by code's language and keywords
• Show Links and Backlinks
  • Show Links: Show Markdown links contained in the current notes.
  • Show Backlinks: Show which note links to the current one. It's an interesting feature motivated by Roam and Obsidian.
  • Note: To avoid syntax issues when using symbol [[ ]] in Typora, this workflow will search through all the notes for Markdown links ( [xx](../xx.md) with a relative path) and use these to process notes' internal connections.
• Create notes with templates
  • Templates: Note, Todo, Snippet, Journal (with location and weather automatically logged)
  • Support customized templates.
• Others
  • Auto-update lookups of synonyms, Markdown links, backlinks ...
  • Manually refresh the Markdown YAML metadata.

Usage

How to configure preference?

• First, please set the Workflow variables.

  • notes_path: dir of your notes. Only one folder is allowed.

    • It's highly recommended to put all your notes into one folder and give it a unique time ID (e.g. 20200824181348).
    • Check out this blog to learn how to use the method of Zettelkasten to handle your knowledge management.

  • files_path: dir of your whole files. It supports multi directories which include sub-folders.

    • In case you really need multi folders, here is the solution.
    • Use comma , to separate your paths.
    • Shallow your folder's depth to enhance searching performance.
  • Example: A possible setting under the following folder tree. ( Click to expand! )

    #  An possible setting of your folder tree.
    
    ~
    └── Documents/
        └── My_Files/
            ├── Notes/
            │   ├── 20200102030405.md
            │   └── 20200102030522.md
            ├── Archives/
            │   ├── Programming/
            │   └── Ideas/
            ├── images/
            └── Others/
    

    notes_path: ~/Documents/My_Notes/Notes/
    files_path: [~/Documents/My_Notes/Notes/, ~/Documents/My_Notes/Archives/]
    

• Configure in detail through the workflow PKManager Configuration

  • Configure: Set specific config items
    • Toggle Modification Monitoring : Manually OR Automatically update notes' lookups of "paths", "synonyms" and "backlinks"?
    • Toggle Tags Searching Mode: Search notes by tags which is specified by metadata "tag" in YAML frontier OR by the hash (#) mark in the content?
    • Toggle Snippet Searching Mode: Search snippet by code's language specified in code fences OR metadata "language" in YAML frontier?
    • Toggle Order of To-dos: List the newest OR the oldest To-dos in the top?
    • Toggle Search Scope: Search Snippet and Notes in its exclusive folder (refer to configs of "path_to_new_xxx") OR in all folders?
    • Number of Reserved Search Results
    • Configurate Weather API Key: Weather API is used to fetch the weather info during creating Journals.
      • Press ⌘ to create your free weather API first.
      • Check out this configuration again and input your your API key.
    • Desired Path to New xxx: Set the path to the note/snippet/todo/...
  • Update Lookups: Refresh YAML and update searching lookups
  • Open Config File: Open the config file "Config.json"
  • Open Templates Folder: Open the folder. Revise the Markdown templates or put your own templates files in this folder.
  • Reset All Configurations: Reset all settings to default.

How to preset notes and templates?

• Set the metadata of your notes ( Click to expand! )

  • metadata: A YAML frontier placed at the beginning of the Markdown document between two triple dashes. It defines some important infos which will be used in searching.

  • Example:

    ---
    title: An Example
    synonyms: [tmp]
    tags: [test, python]
    hidden: False
    typora-root-url: ..
    typora-copy-images-to: ../images
    date: 2020-03-19 04:07:28
    updated: 2020-08-02 14:17:46
    ---
    
    Your note content.

  • hidden: Set to "True" to hide/block specific notes from searching result.

  • synonyms: Define a list of synonyms for current note's title, which helps to find out the same notes when using different keywords/abbreviations.

    • Example: If you create a Note with title test and with synonyms: [tmp, 测试] in YAML metadata, you can get the exact same note when you search for "test", "tmp" or "测试".

Set your templates:

• Select Open templates folder in PKManger Configuration. Customize the templates in the folder or place your own template in it.
• When you type n_ to create a new file, the workflow will load your templates and update your config automatically.
• You can modify the default templates, and they'll be restored when you delete any of them.

How to search?

• s: Search and open ( if existing ) a new note. All searching method involved is case-insensitive. ( NOTE: The following ␣ means "Press the Space bar". )
  • s␣: List RECENT NOTES sorted in reverse order of modification time.
  • s␣test: TITLE SEARCH by keyword "test"
  • s␣test␣ / s␣test␣alfred: FULL-TEXT SEARCH by the EXACT keyword "test" / phrase "test alfred" (case ignored)
  • s␣test&alfred: Full-text search by keyword "test" AND "alfred"
  • s␣test|alfred: Full-test search by keyword "test" OR "alfred"
  • s␣,t1␣t2|t3&t4: Full-text search by tag "t1" AND "t2" AND "t3" AND "t4" (only the 'and' logic is considered in tag search)
  • s␣test␣alfred,t1␣t2: Full-text search by the exact phrase "test alfred" and tag "t1" and "t2"
• sl␣: Search and show MARKDOWN LINKS contained in the current note which is opened in the front Typora window.
• sbl␣: Search and show BACKLINKS related to the current opened note.

How to process my notes?

• For notes listed in the Alfred Filter as searching results
  • Press Enter to open the file.
  • Press Command+Enter to select your further actions over the file.
    • Back: Go back to parent menu.
    • Copy Relative Path: Copy the relative path of selected note to current opened note (in Typora).
    • Copy Markdown Link: Copy Markdown link ([xxx](./?/xxx.md)) to clipboard.
    • Reveal in Finder: Reveal selected file in Finder.
    • Delete: Delete selected file.
• For the note opened in current Typora window
  • ⌘⌥R: Refresh the metadata "Updated" of the current Markdown file

How to create new notes?

• n␣: Create New file by selected templates

Dependencies

• Compulsory
  • Typora: A neat and powerful Markdown editor with WYSIWYM feature.
  • Python3: Python 3 is needed for internal scripts, so make sure you've installed it in your env.
• Optional
  • fswatch: A file change monitor with multiple backends. It's used in auto-updating lookups as you modify your notes, which will improve search performance.
    • Install: brew install fswatch
  • Glance: All-in-one Quick Look plugin for Mac, which provide perfect preview for Markdown files for dismissing its meta info of YAML frontier.

Roadmap 🚧

• Search
  • Tags auto-completion
  • Improve searching performance
• Others
  • Auto bump version in Workflow by operating info.plist

Acknowledgement

• Alfred Markdown Notes inspired me to create this workflow to meet my personal need.

• The icon is made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com.

• This workflow is built on the following projects:

  • CoreLocationCLI: Command line program to print location information from CoreLocation.
  • terminal-notifier: Send User Notifications on macOS from the command-line.