Quill

Markdown notes and todos in the Noctalia bar, with AI capture, summaries, rewriting and Q&A over your own files. Todos are plain - [ ] checkboxes, so the same notes work in any editor, in git, and with tools like Obsidian or Logseq.

Plugin

Field	Value
ID	fel/quill
Entries	Bar widget: status; panel: panel; service: index; shortcut: toggle; launcher provider: capture; desktop widget: tile
Launcher Prefix	/nt

Requirements

Notes and todos work with no dependencies. The optional extras are:

• git — only for Git history (off by default). Enabling it runs git init in the notes folder if it is not already a repository, then commits after changes. It never pushes.
• opencode — only for the opencode CLI AI provider. Every other provider talks HTTP directly and needs no binary.
• An API key for whichever AI provider you pick, unless you use the opencode CLI or a local Ollama. See AI providers.

With AI capture off, or when the AI is unreachable, a due date in the text is still recognised: tomorrow, friday, next week, in 3 days, 2026-10-01, 5/10, 14:30 or 2pm.

Usage

Add the bar widget to your bar in Settings → Bar (widget fel/quill:status).

Widget gestures:

Gesture	Action
Left click	Toggle the panel
Right click	Capture the clipboard (one line → todo, multi-line → note)
Middle click	Open the inbox in $EDITOR
Scroll	Cycle through open todos in the bar for 15s, then back to the count

Toggle the panel from anywhere:

noctalia msg panel-toggle fel/quill:panel

Panel

• Todos — capture box, open/overdue counts, per-todo check, due date and time editor, delete (click twice), a tag filter row, and a click-through to the note a todo lives in. Clear done moves completed todos into the archive file.
• Notes — search (titles and contents), create, open, edit inline, copy, open in $EDITOR, delete, and a Today button for the daily note. In a note you also get Summarize, Extract todos, AI edit (type an instruction like improve or fix grammar and review the rewrite before saving), and clickable [[wikilink]] targets.
• Ask — ask a question over your notes and open todos, plus Plan my day and Weekly review one-click prompts. Answers cite the note titles used.

The Ask box also takes slash commands — type /help for the list: /clear, /plan, /review, /todo <text>, /note <title>, /daily, /save [title], /copy, /undo.

Every change is undoable from the panel header (one step, whole operation). The todo list has a tag filter row, and todos with @daily/@weekly/@monthly are shown at their next upcoming date even before you tick them.

Capture with AI

With AI capture on, typing a sentence in the capture box sends it to the model, which returns a cleaned-up todo (with due date, tags and priority) or a note. Example: buy milk tomorrow → - [ ] Buy milk 📅 2026-09-23 #groceries. Turn it off to append the raw text as a todo.

Launcher

Type /nt followed by a query. Results include matching todos (activating one completes it) and notes (activating one opens it), plus fallbacks to add a todo, create a note, or ask AI. Prefixes inside the query: + or todo to force a todo, # or note to force a note, ? to ask AI. Example:

/nt dentist
/nt + call the dentist tomorrow

Desktop widget

Place fel/quill:tile from Noctalia's desktop-widget editor. It lists the next open todos and opens the panel when clicked.

Shortcut

Add fel/quill:toggle from Settings → Control Center → Shortcuts. It shows the open count and lights up when something is due or overdue.

Daily notes, recurrence, reminders

• Today creates Daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md from a small template and opens it.
• A todo with @daily, @weekly or @monthly is rescheduled automatically when you tick it, in the same file.
• When something becomes due or overdue, the service sends one notification (re-armed daily, and at most every 30 minutes).

Data layout

Everything lives in a normal folder of Markdown files (default ~/notes):

~/notes/
  Inbox.md          # quick captures land here
  project-ideas.md
  Daily/2026-09-22.md
  subfolder/...

A note is one .md file; the first # heading is its title and optional YAML frontmatter can set title and tags. A todo is any - [ ] or * [x] line anywhere in the folder; ticking a box rewrites that line in place. Inline metadata is parsed and hidden in the UI: 📅 2026-09-23 (also due: or @), optionally followed by a 24-hour time such as 📅 2026-09-23 14:30, @daily/@weekly/@monthly, #tags, and !!/#urgent or !p1/#important. Nothing is stored in a database.

AI capture files each todo into a project: the model picks the closest existing project file from your notes (or names a new one, which is created as a note), and only one-off tasks with no project land in Inbox.md.

AI providers

Pick one under AI provider. Everything except the CLI uses the provider's HTTP API directly; the key is resolved from the API key setting, then the API key environment variable setting, then the provider's usual environment variable, then (OpenCode Go only) opencode's own auth.json.

Provider	Endpoint	Key from
OpenCode Go	opencode.ai/zen/go/v1	OPENCODE_API_KEY, OPENCODE_GO_API_KEY, OPENCODE_ZEN_API_KEY, or ~/.local/share/opencode/auth.json
opencode CLI	—	the CLI's own configuration
OpenAI	api.openai.com/v1	OPENAI_API_KEY
Anthropic	api.anthropic.com	ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
Google Gemini	generativelanguage.googleapis.com	GEMINI_API_KEY / GOOGLE_API_KEY
OpenRouter	openrouter.ai/api/v1	OPENROUTER_API_KEY
Groq	api.groq.com/openai/v1	GROQ_API_KEY
Ollama (local)	localhost:11434/v1	none
OpenAI-compatible	your API base URL	OPENAI_API_KEY or API key env

Model ids are free text; set the provider's own model (for example gpt-4o-mini, claude-sonnet-4-5, gemini-2.0-flash, llama3.2). OpenCode Go defaults to deepseek-v4-flash.

Settings

Setting	Type	Default	Description
notes_dir	folder	~/notes	Folder scanned for .md files; created if missing.
inbox_file	string	Inbox.md	File inside the notes folder that quick captures are appended to.
poll_interval_ms	int	5000	How often the folder is checked for changes, in milliseconds.
scan_depth	int	3	How many levels of subfolders to scan.
ai_backend	select	opencode-go	Provider: opencode-go, opencode-cli, openai, anthropic, google, openrouter, groq, ollama, openai-compatible, off.
ai_model	string	deepseek-v4-flash	Model id for the selected provider.
ai_base_url	string	(empty)	Provider API base URL override; required for a custom OpenAI-compatible endpoint.
api_key	string	(empty)	Explicit API key. Stored in plain text in Noctalia's settings file.
api_key_env	string	(empty)	Environment variable to read the key from, e.g. OPENAI_API_KEY.
ai_max_tokens	int	0	Max tokens per reply; 0 uses the provider default.
ai_capture	bool	true	Let the model turn a captured sentence into a todo or note.
max_context_notes	int	4	How many notes are sent along with a question.
daily_dir	string	Daily	Subfolder where the Today button creates YYYY-MM-DD notes.
archive_file	string	Archive.md	Completed todos are moved here by Clear done; hidden from the index.
due_reminders	bool	true	Notify once when a todo becomes due or overdue.
git_history	bool	false	Commit the notes folder after changes (runs git init if needed).
git_debounce_ms	int	8000	How long to wait after the last change before committing.
desktop_items	int	6	How many open todos the desktop widget shows.
show_label	bool	true	Widget: show the open count.
hide_when_empty	bool	false	Widget: hide with no todos and no notes.
icon_color	color	primary	Widget: icon color; turns red when something is overdue.

IPC

noctalia msg plugin fel/quill:index all refresh
noctalia msg plugin fel/quill:index all capture '{"text":"book a haircut friday"}'
noctalia msg plugin fel/quill:index all commit
noctalia msg plugin fel/quill:panel all ask     '{"text":"what is due this week?"}'
noctalia msg plugin fel/quill:panel all open    '{"path":"Inbox.md"}'
noctalia msg plugin fel/quill:panel all rewrite '{"path":"Inbox.md","text":"shorten"}'
noctalia msg plugin fel/quill:panel all daily
noctalia msg plugin fel/quill:panel all clear_done
noctalia msg plugin fel/quill:panel all plan
noctalia msg plugin fel/quill:panel all review
noctalia msg plugin fel/quill:panel all undo

The panel entry only has a runtime while the panel is open, so panel events should follow a panel-open/panel-toggle. capture uses AI structuring when AI capture is on. open, rewrite and clear_done accept paths relative to the notes folder only.

Notes

• Network: the only requests are to the AI provider you selected, and only when you use an AI feature. What is sent depends on the feature: a question sends the open todos and up to Notes in AI context notes chosen for that request; AI capture sends your sentence plus the relative path and title of up to 40 existing notes so the model can file the todo into a project; and Summarize, Extract todos and AI edit send the body of the note they act on. Nothing else leaves the machine, and there is no telemetry.
• Keys: the API key setting is stored in plain text in Noctalia's settings.toml, so an environment variable is preferable. The key is only ever sent in the provider's own auth header, never to a provider that does not need one, and never over plain http:// to a non-loopback address. If no key setting or environment variable is set, the OpenCode Go provider reads the key from opencode's auth.json; set a key or switch provider to avoid that read.
• Files written: only inside the notes folder (notes, the inbox, the daily folder, the archive) and the plugin's own data folder (an AI session id and reminder state). Every read and write is resolved through a containment check that rejects absolute paths, ~, .. and dot-prefixed path segments, so a note path cannot escape the notes folder or reach a hidden file such as .git/config. Git history is scoped to the notes folder with -- ., and is refused outright if the notes folder is your home directory.
• Processes spawned: git (only with Git history) and the opencode CLI (only with that provider) run with argument arrays, never a shell string. The only shell command is opening $EDITOR in a terminal; the note path is shell-quoted and each word of $EDITOR is quoted individually, but $EDITOR itself is still run through a login shell, so only set it to a command you trust.
• AI output is sanitised before it is written as a todo: due dates must match YYYY-MM-DD, times HH:MM, tags [A-Za-z0-9_-/], recurrence is a fixed set, and text has whitespace collapsed, so a model cannot inject extra lines or frontmatter. A note body captured from the model is written as returned, since its whole purpose is to be Markdown — review it before saving.
• Bounded work: AI extraction adds at most 100 todos at a time, notes larger than 256 KB are skipped rather than loaded, and a recurring todo is rolled forward at most 20 years, so a stale or hostile note cannot stall the panel.
• Debugging: logs go to ~/.cache/noctalia/noctalia.log; parse failures are logged with the file that failed.

Development

ln -s ~/dev/quill ~/.local/share/noctalia/plugins/quill
noctalia plugins lint ~/dev/quill
tail -f ~/.cache/noctalia/noctalia.log | grep -iE "plugin|luau"

plugin.toml changes need a config reload; adding or removing an entry needs a Noctalia restart. .luau edits hot-reload.

License

MIT