Common Tasks

This page maps common goals to MCP payloads and CLI commands.

When to read this page: you know the task but not the tool name yet.

Related pages:

• Reference Home
• Tools Index

Choose the write path before editing

For Sisyphus-owned mutations, keep Strict Safe Writes enabled and use the same action with validateOnly=true first when its schema exposes a precondition. Submit the returned short credential with a fresh UUIDv7 requestId; a successful response is verified by bounded readback and a metadata-only idempotency ledger. This is a process-level coordination protocol, not a SiYuan kernel transaction or automatic rollback. The UI, another plugin, direct kernel calls, exports, sync, notifications, feedback, and official extension calls remain outside that guarantee.

MCP/Agent calls over the plugin HTTP server use the coordinator directly. Strict mutation calls received over stdio or from the standalone CLI are forwarded to that same plugin-hosted coordinator; they do not get a second local queue or lease pool. If the plugin HTTP coordinator is unavailable, stop and repair that path rather than retrying the mutation through an uncoordinated route. Read-only actions and external-effect actions follow their own paths.

List notebooks

{ "action": "list" }

siyuan notebook list

Create a document

{
  "action": "create",
  "notebook": "<notebook-id>",
  "path": "/Inbox/Note",
  "markdown": "Hello"
}

siyuan document create --notebook <notebook-id> --path "/Inbox/Note" --markdown "Hello"

Do not repeat the document title as a leading # Note in markdown. document.create and fs.write strip a matching leading H1 automatically to avoid duplicate titles; a different leading H1 is preserved.

Use document.create when you need the document ID immediately. Use fs.write when a human-readable path is enough. Both accept real tags and block refs directly in Markdown:

{
  "action": "create",
  "notebook": "<notebook-id>",
  "path": "/Inbox/Linked Note",
  "markdown": "Related ((20260610000000-abcdefg 'Full title')) #research/todo#"
}

Naked refs such as ((id)) are resolved before writing and expanded to ((id 'anchor')). If anchor lookup fails, MCP falls back to ((id 'id')) with a warning. Footnote-style refs and siyuan://blocks Markdown links are allowed, but results include hints because they do not create SiYuan backlinks.

Edit existing content

Current builds can use fs.replace or block.replace directly on paragraphs containing tags and block refs. External DOM injection scripts are not required.

{
  "action": "replace",
  "path": "/Inbox/Linked Note",
  "edit": {
    "old": "Related ((20260610000000-abcdefg 'Full title')) #research/todo#",
    "new": "Done ((20260610000000-abcdefg 'Full title')) #research/done#"
  }
}

Verified safe cases include replacing a whole paragraph containing a block ref, replacing a whole paragraph containing a tag, replacing a full #tag# token with plain text, and the same operations through block.replace.

block.update with dataType="markdown" or dataType="dom" also normalizes Markdown-looking ((id 'title')), ((id)), and #tag# into real SiYuan inline structures. Do not hand-build complex DOM.

Append a block

{
  "action": "append",
  "parentID": "<doc-or-block-id>",
  "dataType": "markdown",
  "data": "New paragraph"
}

siyuan block append --parent-id <doc-or-block-id> --data-type markdown --data "New paragraph"

When moving several blocks, pass ids in the desired final order. The tool calls the low-level move API from last to first internally so the final order is preserved.

Search content

{
  "action": "fulltext",
  "query": "TODO"
}

siyuan search fulltext --query "TODO"

Read an attribute view

{
  "action": "get",
  "id": "<attribute-view-id>"
}

siyuan av get --id <attribute-view-id>

Compare and restore a document timeline

Use the timeline tool to list existing nodes and create a named document baseline:

{
  "action": "list_nodes",
  "scope": "document",
  "documentId": "<doc-id>",
  "page": 1,
  "pageSize": 50
}

{
  "action": "create_node",
  "name": "Before revision",
  "scope": "document",
  "documentId": "<doc-id>"
}

Keep the returned tag. After editing the document, compare it with that node:

{
  "action": "compare_node",
  "documentId": "<doc-id>",
  "tag": "<timeline-tag>",
  "page": 1,
  "pageSize": 20,
  "includeUnchanged": false
}

Before rollback_document, rollback_block, or delete_node, identify the exact document and node, explain the consequence, and obtain explicit user approval. For a reversible test, first create a protection node for the current state. After approval, a whole-document rollback uses:

{
  "action": "rollback_document",
  "documentId": "<doc-id>",
  "tag": "<timeline-tag>"
}

Then read the document again to verify the result. rollback_block instead requires a fresh opaque changeKey from the latest compare_node response. delete_node removes the protective tag but retains the underlying snapshot.

CLI equivalents:

siyuan-sisyphus timeline create-node --name "Before revision" --scope document --document-id <doc-id> --json
siyuan-sisyphus timeline compare-node --document-id <doc-id> --tag <timeline-tag> --page-size 20 --json
# Run only after explicit approval:
siyuan-sisyphus timeline rollback-document --document-id <doc-id> --tag <timeline-tag> --json

Duplicate document names

When multiple documents under the same parent share a human-readable path, use:

{
  "action": "lookup",
  "notebook": "<notebook-id>",
  "hpath": "/Inbox/Same Name",
  "include": ["ids", "path", "hpath"]
}

The returned idPath.ids lists all matching document IDs. The tool includes a SQL fallback, so callers do not need to hand-write SELECT ... WHERE hpath = ... AND type = 'd'.