Karakeep

Official skill for how to use karakeep (the bookmark manager) and interact with it programmatically.

Karakeep is an open source self-hosted bookmark manager for collecting, organizing, and searching content. This skill covers the core concepts and how to interact with Karakeep via the CLI.

When to use

Use this skill when the user wants to interact with their Karakeep instance (adding bookmarks, managing lists/tags, searching, etc.).

Core Concepts

Bookmarks

• Bookmarks: Core entity in Karakeep. Can be one of links, text or media.
  • Links: Save URLs — Karakeep auto-fetches title, description, image, screenshot, and full-page archive.
  • Text: Quick notes or text snippets stored as bookmarks.
  • Media: Images and PDFs uploaded directly.
• Favorites: Star bookmarks for quick access.
• Archiving: Hide bookmarks from the homepage while keeping them searchable.
• Notes: Attach personal context notes to any bookmark.
• Highlights: Save quotes, summaries, or TODOs while reading — searchable across all bookmarks.

Lists

• Manual lists: Curated collections organized by project or topic. Can be private or public.
• Smart lists: Auto-updating lists powered by search queries (e.g., #ai -archived).
• Collaboration: Invite editors (can add bookmarks) or viewers (read-only) to a list.

Tags

Lightweight labels for any bookmark (topics, sources, workflow states). Multiple tags per bookmark, tags travel with bookmarks across lists. AI can auto-generate tags when configured.

Search Query Language

Karakeep has a powerful search query language for finding the right bookmarks. It supports full-text search, boolean logic, qualifiers, and more.

Basic Syntax

• Spaces between conditions act as implicit AND.
• Use and / or keywords for explicit boolean logic.
• Prefix any qualifier with - or ! to negate it (e.g., -is:archived, !is:fav).
• Use parentheses () for grouping (note: groups themselves can't be negated).
• Any text not part of a qualifier is treated as full-text search (e.g., machine learning is:fav).

Qualifiers

Qualifier	Description	Example
is:fav	Favorited bookmarks	is:fav
is:archived	Archived bookmarks	-is:archived
is:tagged	Bookmarks with one or more tags	is:tagged
is:inlist	Bookmarks in one or more lists	is:inlist
is:link	Link bookmarks	is:link
is:text	Text/note bookmarks	is:text
is:media	Media bookmarks (images/PDFs)	is:media
is:broken	Bookmarks with failed crawls or non-2xx status codes	is:broken
url:<value>	Match URL substring	url:github.com
title:<value>	Match title substring (supports quoted strings)	title:rust, title:"my title"
#<tag> or tag:<tag>	Match bookmarks with specific tag (supports quoted strings)	#important, tag:"work in progress"
list:<name>	Match bookmarks in a specific list (supports quoted strings)	list:reading, list:"to review"
after:<date>	Created on or after date (YYYY-MM-DD)	after:2024-01-01
before:<date>	Created on or before date (YYYY-MM-DD)	before:2024-12-31
age:<time-range>	Filter by creation age. Use < / > for max/min age. Units: d (days), w (weeks), m (months), y (years)	age:<1d, age:>2w, age:<6m
feed:<name>	Bookmarks imported from a specific RSS feed	feed:Hackernews
source:<value>	Match by capture source. Values: api, web, cli, mobile, extension, singlefile, rss, import	source:rss, -source:web

Examples

# Favorited bookmarks from 2024 tagged "important"
is:fav after:2024-01-01 before:2024-12-31 #important

# Archived bookmarks in "reading" list or tagged "work"
is:archived and (list:reading or #work)

# Untagged or unorganized bookmarks
-is:tagged or -is:inlist

# Recent bookmarks from the last week
age:<1w

# Full-text search combined with qualifiers
machine learning is:fav -is:archived

RSS Feeds

Karakeep can also be used to consume RSS feeds, but also can itself act as an RSS feed publisher.

• Publishing: Export any list as an RSS feed with a unique token.
• Consuming: Auto-monitor external RSS feeds and create bookmarks from new items (hourly, with duplicate detection).

Automation

• Rule Engine: If-this-then-that rules to auto-tag, favorite, or route bookmarks to lists.
• Webhooks: Subscribe to bookmark events (add/update/archive).

Interacting with Karakeep via the CLI

Installation

npm install -g @karakeep/cli

Or via Docker:

docker run --rm ghcr.io/karakeep-app/karakeep-cli:release --help

Authentication

The CLI requires an API key and server address. Get the API key from your Karakeep instance's settings page.

Option 1 — Environment variables (recommended):

export KARAKEEP_API_KEY="your-api-key"

# If self-hosted, pass the server address as well. It defaults to the cloud instance if not set:
export KARAKEEP_SERVER_ADDR="https://cloud.karakeep.com"

Option 2 — CLI flags:

karakeep --api-key <key> --server-addr <addr> <command>

Verify authentication:

karakeep whoami

Bookmark Commands

Run karakeep --help to see all available commands, but the most important ones are:

# Add a link bookmark
karakeep bookmarks add --link "https://example.com"

# Add a link with tags and to a specific list
karakeep bookmarks add --link "https://example.com" --tag-name "reading" --list-id <list-id>

# Add a text bookmark
karakeep bookmarks add --note "Remember to review the PR"

# Get bookmark details
karakeep bookmarks get <bookmark-id>
karakeep bookmarks get <bookmark-id> --include-content

# Update a bookmark
karakeep bookmarks update <bookmark-id> --title "New Title"
karakeep bookmarks update <bookmark-id> --archive
karakeep bookmarks update <bookmark-id> --favourite
karakeep bookmarks update-tags <bookmark-id> --add-tag "important"
karakeep bookmarks update-tags <bookmark-id> --remove-tag "old-tag"

# List management
karakeep lists list
karakeep lists get --list <list-id>
karakeep lists add-bookmark --list <list-id> --bookmark <bookmark-id>
karakeep lists remove-bookmark --list <list-id> --bookmark <bookmark-id>
karakeep lists delete <list-id>


# List all bookmarks
karakeep bookmarks list

# Search bookmarks
karakeep bookmarks search "is:fav #work"
karakeep bookmarks search "rust" --limit 10 --sort-order relevance
karakeep bookmarks search "is:tagged" --all   # paginate through all results

# Delete a bookmark
karakeep bookmarks delete <bookmark-id>

You can always pass --json to get raw JSON output instead of pretty-printed output.