Publish to note.com

Publish to note.com

Purpose

Publish markdown articles to note.com as drafts via their undocumented API. Handles email/password authentication, markdown-to-HTML conversion, eyecatch (header) image upload, and draft creation/update.

Prerequisites

• Environment variables: NOTE_EMAIL and NOTE_PASSWORD must be set (in .env or environment)
• Python package: requests (and optionally python-dotenv for .env loading)

Usage

Create a new draft from a file

python publish_to_note.py --title "Article Title" --body-file ./article.txt

Create a draft with eyecatch image

python publish_to_note.py --title "Article Title" --body-file ./article.txt --eyecatch ./header.jpg

Read body from stdin

cat article.txt | python publish_to_note.py --title "Article Title" --stdin

Update an existing draft

python publish_to_note.py --title "Updated Title" --body-file ./article.txt --update 149960187

Save result JSON to a file

python publish_to_note.py --title "Article Title" --body-file ./article.txt --output ./result.json

CLI Flags

Flag	Required	Description
--title	Yes	Article title
--body-file	One of body-file/stdin	Path to markdown/text body file
--stdin	One of body-file/stdin	Read body from stdin instead of file
--eyecatch	No	Path to header image (jpg, png, gif, webp)
--update	No	Existing note_id to update instead of creating new
--output	No	Path to save result JSON (note_id, note_key, edit_url)

How It Works

Authentication

Email/password login via POST /api/v1/sessions/sign_in. Returns session cookies used for all subsequent requests. No manual JWT refresh needed.

2-Step Draft Creation Flow

1. Create empty note: POST /api/v1/text_notes with empty JSON body. Returns note_id and note_key.
2. Save draft content: POST /api/v1/text_notes/draft_save?id={note_id} with name (title) and body (HTML).

Eyecatch Upload

Eyecatch upload requires note_id, so it always happens after note creation (or with --update):

POST /api/v1/image_upload/note_eyecatch with multipart form data containing file and note_id.

Important: draft_save is Destructive

draft_save overwrites all fields that are sent. If you call it with only an eyecatch_key, the body gets cleared. Always include the body when updating a draft.

Markdown-to-HTML Conversion

The script converts a simple markdown-like format to note.com HTML:

Markdown	HTML
Lines starting with ■	<h2>
Lines starting with ▼	<h3>
Lines starting with >	<blockquote>
---	<hr>
Fenced code blocks	<p> with <br> joins
**bold**	<b>
`code`	<code>
Regular paragraphs	<p> (one per line)

Environment Variable Loading

The script searches for .env files in this order:

1. python-dotenv (if installed) loads from current directory
2. Manual search: current directory, then parent directories up to filesystem root

Output

On success, prints the draft edit URL and returns a JSON object:

{
  "note_id": 149960187,
  "note_key": "n1a2b3c4d5e6",
  "edit_url": "https://note.com/notes/n1a2b3c4d5e6/edit"
}

When using --update, returns:

{
  "note_id": 149960187
}