Workflowy

Workflowy outliner CLI for reading, searching, and editing nodes. Use when the user wants to interact with their Workflowy outline — searching, adding items, viewing trees, marking complete, bulk operations, or usage reports. Also use whenever the user shares a workflowy.com URL (e.g. https://workflowy.com/#/...).

Use the unofficial workflowy CLI mholzen/workflowy to interact with the Workflowy API for managing a Workflowy outline. Requires API key setup.

Setup (once)

Get your API key at https://workflowy.com/api-key/, save it to ~/.workflowy/api.key, and ensure only your user can access it:

bash

mkdir -p ~/.workflowy
echo "your-api-key-here" > ~/.workflowy/api.key
chmod 600 ~/.workflowy/api.key

Alternatively, set the WORKFLOWY_API_KEY environment variable:

bash

export WORKFLOWY_API_KEY="your-api-key-here"

Common commands

Note: See the full command reference for more details.

Reading

bash

# Get root nodes (depth 2 by default)
workflowy get

# Get specific node by UUID or short ID
workflowy get <item-id>
workflowy get https://workflowy.com/#/59fc7acbc68c

# Show a node's children as a flat list
workflowy list <item-id>

# Search (full text, case-insensitive)
workflowy search -i "meeting notes"

# Search with extended regex
workflowy search -E "<time.*>"

# Search within a subtree
workflowy search "bug" --item-id <parent-id>

Writing

bash

# Add a new node to the Inbox
workflowy create "Buy groceries" --parent-id=inbox

# Add a node to a specific parent
workflowy create "Task" --parent-id=<uuid>

# Update a node
workflowy update <item-id> --name "New name"

# Complete/uncomplete
workflowy complete <item-id>
workflowy uncomplete <item-id>

# Move a node
workflowy move <item-id> <new-parent-id>

# Delete a node (includes its children!)
workflowy delete <item-id>

Bulk operations

bash

# Search and replace (dry run first!)
workflowy replace --dry-run "foo" "bar"
workflowy replace --interactive "foo" "bar"

# Regex find/replace using capture groups
workflowy replace "TASK-([0-9]+)" 'ISSUE-$1'

# Transform: split by newlines into children
workflowy transform <item-id> split -s "\n"

# Transform: trim whitespace
workflowy transform <item-id> trim

Statistics

bash

# Where is most content?
workflowy report count --threshold 0.01

# Nodes with most children
workflowy report children --top-n 20

# Stale content (oldest modified)
workflowy report modified --top-n 50

# Most mirrored nodes (requires backup)
workflowy report mirrors --top-n 20

Data Access Methods

Method	Speed	Freshness	Use For
--method=get	Medium	Real-time	Specific items
--method=export	Fast (cached)	~1 min	Full tree access
--method=backup	Fastest	Stale	Bulk ops, offline

For offline mode, enable Workflowy's Dropbox backup:

bash

workflowy get --method=backup

Short IDs

Workflowy supports short IDs, obtained from the "Copy Internal Link" menu:

• Web URL: https://workflowy.com/#/59fc7acbc68c
• Can be used directly, e.g. workflowy get https://workflowy.com/#/59fc7acbc68c

Special named targets

• inbox — user's inbox
• home — root of outline

bash

workflowy create "Quick note" --parent-id=inbox
workflowy id inbox  # resolve to UUID

Notes

• Deleting a node also deletes all its children
• Results are sorted by priority (display order)
• Use --method=export for large tree operations (cached, faster)
• Mirror analysis requires using the backup method
• Make sure to confirm before performing bulk replace operations