| name | notion-lifeos |
| description | Notion LifeOS — PARA life management with Make Time journaling. Activate when: user mentions Notion, notes, tasks, projects, todos, journals, or uses phrases like 'take a note', 'add a task', 'what do I need to do', 'search my notes', 'jot down', 'today was great', 'record a thought', or Chinese equivalents like '帮我记一下', '加个任务', '今天要做什么', '查笔记'. Also: PARA method, personal knowledge management, daily reviews. Do NOT activate for: Notion API docs, Notion pricing/plans, workspace admin, database schema modification, or general productivity advice without data intent.
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Notion LifeOS Skill
A Notion life management system based on the PARA method and Make Time framework.
When NOT to Use This Skill
- Notion product questions — pricing, features, API documentation, workspace admin
- Generic productivity advice — "how should I organize my life" without intent to store/retrieve data
- Other note-taking apps — unless user wants to migrate data INTO Notion LifeOS
- Database schema modification — creating new databases, adding/removing properties
Core Principles
- Capture first, organize later — Never let processing block input
- Proactive information surfacing — Use Relations to automatically surface information where it's needed
See JEFF_SU_SUMMARY.md for detailed design philosophy.
Reference Files
Read these as needed — do NOT load them all upfront:
Operation Guide
- With Notion MCP tools → See references/mcp-guide.md
- With Notion API access → See references/api-guide.md
- For structured queries (filter by date, checkbox, select) → Always use scripts or REST API. MCP
notion-search is semantic only and CANNOT filter by property values.
Intent Recognition & Database Mapping
| User Intent | Target DB | Method |
|---|
| "Take a note about XXX" | Notes | MCP / API |
| "Add a task: XXX" | Task | scripts/create-task.sh / MCP / API |
| "The best thing today was..." | Make Time | MCP / API (check dedup first) |
| "Create project XXX" | Projects | MCP / API |
| "Today's tasks" | Task | scripts/query-tasks.sh --date today |
| "Any unfinished tasks?" | Task | scripts/query-tasks.sh --undone |
| "Today's unfinished tasks" | Task | scripts/query-tasks.sh --date today --undone |
| "Search notes about XX" | Notes | MCP notion-search |
| "Add a resource/reference" | Resources | MCP / API |
For Note Type selection and Make Time journal extraction logic, see references/query-guide.md.
For composite intents (multiple actions in one message), see references/advanced.md.
Business Rules
- Database IDs: Read
~/.config/notion-lifeos/CONFIG.private.md for IDs (fallback: CONFIG.private.md in skill dir). If missing, search for "LifeOS" root page (NOT "LifeOS Template"). Last resort: guide user to references/setup.md.
- Schema-first: Fetch database schema before first write in a session — confirm property names and allowed select values.
- Make Time dedup: Always check if today's entry exists before creating (
scripts/check_today_journal.sh). Update if exists.
- Date format: ISO-8601 only (e.g.,
2026-03-08).
- Relations: Require target page ID — search for it first.
- Post-op confirmation: Always confirm results to the user.
Gotchas (Common Pitfalls)
MCP-Specific
- Checkbox:
__YES__ / __NO__, NOT true/false
- URL property: Prefix with
userDefined: (e.g., userDefined:URL)
- Date property: Split into
date:PropName:start, date:PropName:end, date:PropName:is_datetime
- multi_select: Comma-separated string, NOT array
- notion-search: Cannot filter by property values — use scripts/REST API
REST API-Specific
- database_id vs data_source_id: REST API uses
database_id, MCP uses data_source_id — they differ
- Date filter: ISO-8601 only, never natural language
General
- Select values change: NEVER hardcode — always fetch schema first
- Duplicate DB names: Always use databases under the LifeOS root page
